Overview
- The National Science Foundation said Tuesday it will dispatch ships in June to begin recovering more than 900 deep‑sea instruments from the Ocean Observatories Initiative with removal work expected to take about 15 months and some seismic sensors left operating through 2028.
- The network cost roughly $368 million to build, began operating in 2016 with a planned 25‑year lifespan, and required about $48 million a year to run, figures that officials cite as part of a lifecycle and reprioritization rationale.
- Scientists say the OOI produced continuous measurements used to study how the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide, track marine heat waves, monitor coastal flooding and follow shifts in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current at the Irminger Sea site.
- Critics including former NOAA acting chief scientist Craig McLean and researchers warn the retrieval will interrupt real‑time observations, risk losing specialized engineering expertise, and weaken U.S. standing in international ocean science after Congress previously restored funding following administration cut proposals.
- NSF and program managers say the decade of archived OOI data will remain available but real‑time monitoring will stop for affected arrays, a change that could reduce near‑term forecasting ability for fisheries and coastal hazards and complicate international studies that rely on continuous measurements.