Trump administration abandons plans to remove ocean monitoring system
The Trump administration is backing off from its plans to remove a decade-old ocean monitoring system Oregonians rely on for fishing, recreation, science and emergency services.
The National Science Foundation this month began dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative system, a system of sensors that provide data on ocean conditions.
The move was a part of a broader push by the Trump administration to cut climate science operations. But after an intense bipartisan response, the federal science agency said Thursday it would halt its plans and work to redeploy the instruments it had removed.
The National Science Foundation established the system in 2016 with plans to operate it for three decades. The system includes more than 900 instruments worth $386 million located along the coasts of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and Greenland used to track waves, wind and current data. The tools also track the ocean’s salinity and can detect early marine heatwaves and El Niño-related anomalies.
https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2026/06/18/repub/trump-administration-abandons-plans-to-remove-ocean-monitoring-system/
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