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

By Laura Paddison, Ella Nilsen, CNN

(CNN) — 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.”

The NSF’s about-face comes amid intense backlash to its original decision. Experts feared the US was taking eyes off the oceans as they endure a period of huge change, with off-the-chart temperatures fueling devastating storms and threatening fisheries, and fears a critical system of Atlantic Ocean currents could be on course to collapse.

Ocean scientists CNN previously spoke to said ditching the monitoring system was “foolish” and “counterintuitive.”

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle raised objections. “Dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative is supreme stupidity, costing taxpayers millions of dollars and destroying a vital source of climate data,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, wrote in a statement.

On Wednesday, Merkley and Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska passed bipartisan legislation in the Senate to block the use of federal funds to dismantle the system until the NSF conducts a “thorough review and assessment” of the network, with input from scientists and coastal communities.

After NSF’s Thursday announcement, Murkowski heralded the decision as a “massive win for coastal communities and fishermen around the country.”

House Science Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, said the NSF’s reversal was welcome but cautioned it was not yet clear “how much damage they have already done.”

“This should have never happened,” she told CNN in a statement. “This pathetic scheme was illegal. NSF is governing via chaos and reactionary nonsense. Scientists and coastal economies that depend on this data deserve better.”

Lofgren said that she and her team would follow NSF’s actions closely. Its “next steps must be nothing short of replacing any of the instruments that have already been removed and ceasing all activities to descale until legitimate expert advice has been sought,” she said.

The NSF said it “remains committed to ocean sciences, to responsible stewardship of its research infrastructure and to supporting the stakeholders that depend on it.”

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