Trump administration ditches plan to close a critical ocean monitoring system after furious bipartisan backlash

Source: CNN Climate

PUBLISHED Jun 18, 2026, 1:58 PM ET


The Trump administration is U-turning on its controversial decision to dismantle a critical ocean monitoring system that provides vital information on the health of the world’s oceans, after a bipartisan backlash in Congress.

The Ocean Observatories Initiative was established in 2016 and involves around 900 instruments across parts of the Pacific and Atlantic, especially designed to withstand the immense pressure and corrosive saltiness of the ocean depths.

In late May, the National Science Foundation, which funds the $386 million deep-ocean system, announced it would be pulling up buoys and other underwater equipment from arrays off the coasts of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, North Carolina and Greenland in what it called a “descoping” of the network.

But Thursday, NSF announced it will halt these plans and convene an expert panel to “identify a sustainable path” forward. One array off the coasts of Oregon and Washington has already been removed, but the NSF said in a statement that it is “developing plans to redeploy the equipment.” The organization confirmed it would “not proceed with further removal or descoping of equipment from the remaining arrays.”

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/18/climate/trump-administration-reverses-decision-ocean-monitoring-system