Senate demands NSF halt dismantling of $386 million ocean monitoring network

Senators Jeff Merkley and Lisa Murkowski led a bipartisan letter on June 15 demanding the National Science Foundation stop decommissioning the Ocean Observatories Initiative. The network monitors ocean chemistry, seismic activity, and tsunami risk across the Pacific Northwest. Gaps in decades of continuous data cannot be recovered once severed. NSF had committed to five-year funding as recently as March 2024.