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.
In Oregon, underwater sensors and buoys stationed off the coast of Newport keep a close watch on ocean health by tracking ocean acidification and spots with depleted oxygen levels that threaten marine life.
“Dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative is supreme stupidity, costing taxpayers millions of dollars and destroying a vital source of climate data,” Oregon’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley said in a statement.
Merkley, however, celebrated the federal government’s decision to abandon its plans on social media after he and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, led the unanimous passage of a bill Wednesday to block the government from dismantling the monitoring system.
Murkowski was one of the first Republicans in Congress to protest the dismantling, calling the move “pathetic” and a waste of time and money at the expense of scientific infrastructure.
A group of seven bipartisan state lawmakers representing Oregon’s coastal districts also opposed the federal government’s plans in a letter to National Science Foundation Chief of Staff Brian Stone.
“For Oregon’s coastal communities, whose livelihoods depend on accurate, real time ocean information, the removal of these buoys is not an abstract policy decision,” the letter reads. “It is a direct threat to safety, economic stability, and our ability to respond to rapidly changing ocean conditions.”
The letter included signatures from state Reps. Court Boice, R-Gold Beach; Boomer Wright, R-Reedsport; Cyrus Javadi, D-Tillamook andDavid Gomberg, D-Otis, and Sens. Suzanne Weber, R-Tillamook; Dick Anderson, R-Lincoln City, and David Brock Smith, R-Port Orford.
“These buoys provide real-time, publicly accessible data that our fishermen, mariners, scientists, and emergency managers rely on every single day,” said Brock Smith, the vice chair of Oregon’s legislative coastal caucus. “Removing them without adequate scientific review or stakeholder consultation is unacceptable and puts our coastal communities and their economies at risk.”
