A vital part of one of the world's most ambitious ocean monitoring networks is being decommissioned this month, with scientists set to retrieve a research buoy from the Pacific off the Oregon coast on 16 June. This marks the beginning of the end for much of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), a $386 million system of over 900 sensors that has provided continuous real-time data for more than a decade.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced last month its intention to dismantle most of the network, with instruments to be pulled from waters off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina, and Greenland by 2027. The NSF described the move as a 'descoping' as part of a 'wider strategy of a nimbler approach' to prioritise evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies, and cited a forthcoming 2025 National Academies report on the future of ocean science.
Scientists who developed and depend on the system say the timing is particularly harsh, as an El Niño event is forecast to hit the Pacific coast this summer, with a marine heatwave already causing unusually warm waters off California. Without the OOI's moorings and underwater gliders, researchers will lose much of their ability to measure conditions below the surface, including low oxygen zones.
'It's a crippling loss of information,' said Ed Dever, a professor at Oregon State University who helped lead the initiative's Pacific Northwest operations. The OOI launched in 2015 after more than a decade of planning and was designed as a 25 to 30-year project, based on the consensus that detecting climate signals requires at least three decades of continuous data. 'We've just got to the 10 year record,' Dever said, 'which will give you some hints, but it won't continue on.'
The initiative operated on roughly $48 million a year, not including research vessel costs. Prior to budget cuts that began in 2025, around 60 to 70 people worked directly on the project. One significant piece will remain: a seafloor cable network off the Pacific Northwest coast managed by the University of Washington, which will continue providing data on volcanic and seismic activity.
'What's happening with the Ocean Observatories Initiative is not unique,' Dever said. 'This is just one of a number of science facilities that is being dismantled at the present time. It seems to really mark the end of a federal commitment to basic scientific research.'
