NORTH CAROLINA — The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced on May 21 that it had “initiated descoping of the Ocean Observatories Initiative” (OOI), a $368 million deep-sea observation system operational since 2016. The plan includes removing all in-water infrastructure from observation sites off the coasts of North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and the Irminger Sea.
Jim Edson, principal investigator of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, said the NSF’s plan involves a phased recovery and infrastructure removal process expected to take place over the next 15 months. “As infrastructure is recovered from each array, the associated real-time data streams and observing capabilities at those locations will come to an end.”
The OOI comprises more than 900 instruments that collect data on ocean health, including current patterns, climate variability, and marine biodiversity. Its data has contributed to research on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a critical system of Atlantic Ocean currents.
Hilary Palevsky, professor of marine biogeochemistry and oceanography at Boston College, said the initiative enabled scientists without specialized deployment resources to access high-quality data. “One of the real powers of this OOI and a lot of the collection of autonomous data is that scientists like me don’t have to have the expertise or the resources to be able to deploy this kind of infrastructure ourselves.” She added, “Over the more than 10 years that these things have been deployed, they’ve just gotten better and better at it. And so the data return has also gotten better and better over time … the scientific community was really just getting to the point of being able to capitalize on the data that had been collected so far … I’m really disappointed for the continuation of this important data set.”
Palevsky warned that rebuilding the network in the future would be difficult because the team with the necessary expertise is being dismantled along with the infrastructure. She said observations from the Irminger Sea site have provided important insights into how AMOC drivers vary from year to year. “As we reduce the amount of data that we have, the observations, as well as the science more generally to understand what’s happening in the climate system, it makes it much harder for us as a society to understand what we’re facing and what we need to do to plan for and adapt to it.”
Mike England, NSF head of media affairs, said the agency is not cancelling the OOI. “The decision to descope aligns with NSF’s 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.”