The National Science Foundation has begun dismantling a $360 million ocean monitoring network years ahead of schedule, with critics calling the move a “tragic” loss of crucial real-time measurements. The pullback will remove four of the last five instrument ar
When the ocean monitoring arrays go silent, it won’t just be a technical change. For scientists who depend on continuous measurements—day after day, winter after winter—it will mean losing the only proof they have for what the warming ocean is actually doing.
The National Science Foundation has begun dismantling a major ocean monitoring network more than a decade earlier than planned. even though the initiative was built to last 25 years. Critics say the retirement of the $360 million system doesn’t add up. especially as climate change pushes ocean temperatures toward record highs.
The plan is already underway: by the end of summer 2027. the foundation will remove four of its last five arrays. according to a statement by Jim Edson. a principal investigator for the initiative and senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The removals will end most monitoring in one of the nation’s most advanced continuous observing systems—cut to less than halfway through its intended lifespan.
Craig McLean. a former acting chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. called the effort “a marvelous scientific experimentation. from the surface to the deepest part of where they are moored.” He stressed that NOAA’s separate global ocean observing system used for climate outlooks and weather forecasting would remain safe—but said the ocean initiative itself is not.
The foundation’s rationale. outlined in a media statement. points to “new scientific priorities” and a shift toward a more “nimble approach.” But the justification has been challenged by the National Academies of Sciences. Engineering. and Medicine and by authors of a key Academies report—exactly the document the foundation says it relied on.
The cost of pulling the arrays is not abstract. Researchers warn the loss of measurements will limit efforts to understand ocean phenomena ranging from marine heat waves and hurricanes to fisheries and long-term shifts in climate.
Ocean observers were designed to run continuously, and the dismantling is set to strip away that continuity. The initiative came online in 2016 at a cost of more than $360 million and originally included seven arrays.
According to Edson’s statement. the dismantling includes removal of the array off the Pacific Northwest coast. with the work expected to be complete later in June. Three others will follow: in the Gulf of Alaska. on the continental shelf off New England. and in the Irminger Sea southeast of Greenland.
After the pullback, only a cabled array that monitors seismic and volcanic activity along the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate off the Pacific Northwest will remain. Two arrays in the southern oceans off South America were discontinued in 2018 and 2020.
The foundation says the decade of data produced by the initiative will remain online and accessible. But it also says real-time data streams and observing capabilities at those locations will come to an end.
Those real-time streams are the difference between reading history and tracking change.
Suzanne Pelisson. director of public relations for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. said the arrays track marine heatwaves. collect data on how the ocean influences hurricanes and other events. and improve understanding of fisheries and other marine ecosystems. The instruments measure temperature, salinity, oxygen levels, currents and more.
Pelisson also said annual maintenance costs were estimated at roughly $40 million a year. She described the program as producing “billions of megabytes” of data—physical. chemical. biological and geological—and said it supported researchers in science. government and industry. Fisheries researchers, for example, used the data to monitor water currents and fish movement.
Even so, the deeper worry among researchers is what happens when long-term observation is cut short.
Mark Spalding. president of the nonprofit Ocean Foundation. told the outlet that the removal will increase risks to coastal communities. local economies. and national security. He said it would mean less focus on flood risk. fewer data for commercial fisheries. and fewer data points on the Atlantic Overturning Meridional Circulation. described as a key weather driver.
In a series of LinkedIn posts about the monitoring network, Spalding pointed out that satellites can see the “skin of the ocean,” but cannot measure what is happening down through the ocean depths to track salinity, acidity, oxygen and more.
The timing of the decision has added fuel to the debate. The 2026 budget proposed cutting the initiative by 80% over the next 10 years, drawing protests from the foundation’s partners. Spalding said that after initiative partners pushed back last summer, Congress specifically worked to fund the program.
For him, the foundation’s decision to remove the system from the sea anyway “feels a little bit like a child who didn’t get its way.”
In a statement sent for publication. Mike England. the science foundation’s head of media affairs. said dismantling the arrays aligns with a “wider strategy of a nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies. as well as smart lifecycle management within its research infrastructure portfolio.”.
That strategy shift is where the conflict sharpens.
The foundation attributed the dismantling to recommendations in the 2025 National Academies report. “Forecasting the Ocean: The 2025-2035 Decade of Ocean Science.” But James Yoder. a co-chair of the panel that produced the report and an author on a similar report released 10 years earlier. said the foundation’s interpretation does not match what the committee concluded.
“The closing [of the observatories] had nothing to do with anything we concluded in the report,” Yoder said. He said the committee recommended that the foundation continue funding core infrastructure, including the observatories. The committee also recommended a separate and independent review to consider how the next version of the initiative could meet future needs. in response to valid concerns raised by other scientists.
Yoder. an emeritus professor at the University of Rhode Island. said the observatories were designed from the beginning to measure change in the world’s oceans—and that. because of that design. the effort became a target for the Trump administration. He said two arrays in the southern oceans were canceled during the previous Trump administration.
During the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) era in 2025, nearly $500 million in grants and contracts were cut from the foundation. In April 2026, the White House dismissed the entire appointed board that oversees the foundation.
The foundation’s latest strategic plan is 13 pages, compared to 72 in 2022, and it does not mention climate change. Yoder said the administration wants to “purge anything to do with climate out of the federal government.” He also said that when the 2025 report was at risk of being canceled. the authors “tried to get as many of the climate words as they could into some other form.”.
“There’s definitely a climate theme to the arrays,” Yoder said. “The only array that doesn’t have a climate theme is the one they’re leaving alone for right now.”
The dispute is not just about terminology. It is also about whether key questions in climate science can be settled without the measurements that were built to answer them.
McLean said removal of the Irminger Sea array is a particularly “tragic” loss because of the region’s importance to national security and economic security, as well as its value for understanding the overturning circulation, a major current that moves heat energy around in the Atlantic.
Some scientists say their models show the circulation could collapse, producing catastrophic impacts in the world’s weather. Yoder said researchers are still trying to determine whether the current is slowing—and, if it is, whether that change is natural or occurring because of Greenland ice melt.
“There’s an argument between people who do models and people who measure,” Yoder said. “The people making the measurements don’t see a slowdown.” If the instruments are pulled out, he said, there will be no way to validate—or not—what the models show.
He also criticized the removal schedule for the Pacific Northwest array. Yoder called the timing “silly,” citing a potentially strong El Niño developing. “Left at sea. (the array) could produce important data about the weather-altering climate pattern known to kill sea birds. mammals and fish. ” he said. “But that’s the first thing they’re going to yank out.”.
Pelisson said no existing observing system fully replicates the combination of capabilities provided by the initiative. The unique value of the arrays. she said. comes from their scale. duration. and continuous observations spanning physical. chemical. biological. geological. and atmospheric processes.
That continuity is what researchers fear will be hardest to replace.
The inability to sustain long-term, continuous observations, Pelisson said, will be the biggest loss from removing the arrays. She added that it would also mean losing the expertise and experience required to design, deploy, and maintain other advanced marine observation systems.
The foundation said it encouraged researchers to continue working with the decade of data so it can show up in proposals, publications, and presentations.
On June 9. the National Academies issued a follow-up statement saying. “Preserving and improving (the initiative) and other ocean-observing infrastructure is critical to advancing U.S. ocean science at a time when other countries. including our competitors. are increasing their investments in ocean science and advancing their capacities.”.
For now, the timetable is moving. The Pacific Northwest array is expected to be fully removed later in June. and Edson’s statement lays out a path to ending most monitoring by 2027—leaving only the seismic and volcanic monitoring array off the Pacific Northwest in place. In a world where oceans are changing faster than they can be observed. the question for scientists is simple and sharp: once the measurements are gone. what exactly will replace the proof they were collecting?.
National Science Foundation ocean observatories initiative climate change marine heatwaves hurricanes fisheries Atlantic overturning circulation Atlantic Overturning Meridional Circulation Irminger Sea Pacific Northwest array Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Jim Edson Craig McLean Mark Spalding National Academies ocean monitoring