Against the current After Senate vote, Trump admin backs off plans to kill ocean monitoring It’s unclear whether the system is currently intact. John Timmer – Jun 18, 2026 2:19 pm | 103 Credit: OOI Credit: OOI Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav In May, the federal government announced without warning that it would take apart a network of ocean monitoring systems that it had spent over $350 million to build. No reason was given for the decision to shut down the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), but suspicion immediately focused on the network’s role in tracking climate change. But the OOI also provides data that’s useful for weather forecasting and fisheries management, leading to widespread opposition. Today, it appears that the opposition has won, as the government will announce that it’s reversing the decision. The big remaining question is how much damage the OOI took during the intervening month.
As of now, there is no formal statement available from the federal government. However, The New York Times reports that the decision will be announced later today, and Ars received a statement from Zoe Lofgren, the ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee, indicating that the decision has been made. The OOI is a federally supported resource that provides ocean data for use by academic researchers, government planners, and private companies. It consists of arrays of monitoring systems in several locations in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that can track things like currents, salinity, chemical levels, temperatures, and tectonic activity.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/06/after-senate-vote-trump-admin-backs-off-plans-to-kill-ocean-monitoring/
As of now, there is no formal statement available from the federal government. However, The New York Times reports that the decision will be announced later today, and Ars received a statement from Zoe Lofgren, the ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee, indicating that the decision has been made. The OOI is a federally supported resource that provides ocean data for use by academic researchers, government planners, and private companies. It consists of arrays of monitoring systems in several locations in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that can track things like currents, salinity, chemical levels, temperatures, and tectonic activity.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/06/after-senate-vote-trump-admin-backs-off-plans-to-kill-ocean-monitoring/