Alaskans will be flying blind after NSF decommissions ocean monitoring network

The upcoming loss of a deep-ocean monitoring system is triggering deep anxiety in Alaska, the nation’s top fish-producing state, where temperatures are warming twice as quickly as the global average. The National Science Foundation announced plans in May to decommission the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a nearly $368 million network of scientific instruments that tracks ocean chemistry, wave action, water temperature, salinity, and a host of other metrics. The real-time information from these ocean observatories helps scientists, fishery managers, coastal hazard planners, and even the military plan and prepare for the future. Whether that’s calculating how much fish can be harvested or when a marine heatwave or giant wave action may be occurring, the data is used by a plethora of sources. “It helps us see where we’re going and what’s coming at us,” said Jan Newton, University of Washington affiliate professor of biological oceanography. The NSF’s decision to pull the observatories from the water has alarm bells ringing in fishing circles of Alaska, home to a $5.3 billion commercial seafood industry that employs nearly 42,000 people, according to a recent report that McKinley Research Group prepared for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. Michelle Stratton, executive director of the Alaska Marine Community Coalition, said the loss of Ocean Station Papa, the deep-ocean observing system situated in the Gulf of Alaska at a depth of nearly 14,000 feet, means the state will lose one of its only systems that documents how the ocean is changing in real time. “We’re in the middle of salmon crashes, crab collapses, and repeated marine heatwaves, and this decision takes away the data we rely on to understand what’s happening and how to manage these fisheries,” Stratton said. As for why NSF is pulling the scientific hardware, spokesperson Cassandra Eichner said the decision “aligns with the 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.” All previously collected data will remain accessible, and the NSF remains committed to ocean science, Eichner said. But critics say the decision to take down the ocean observatory network, which consists of some 900 deep-sea instruments distributed across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, aligns with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for governing prepared by the Heritage Foundation and, to some extent, enacted by the Trump administration. Project 2025 cast government-sponsored oceanic and atmospheric research as a regular source of “climate alarmism,” particularly within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its various agencies. The oceans are one of the most unexplored, unmeasured, and, ultimately, poorly understood regions of Earth, said Rick Thoman, climate specialist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who spent 30 years at the National Weather Service. What the Ocean Observatories Initiative does, Thoman said, is to shed light on what’s happening in the deep, dark depths of the underwater world, not just at the surface. “Losing the information provided by Ocean Station Papa on how the ocean is changing with a warming climate is like driving down a dark freeway with no lights on,” said Carol Janzen, oceanographer with the Alaska Ocean Observing System. Since Alaska has suffered intensive marine heatwaves in recent years, along with population crashes of species like Chinook salmon and snow crab, the last thing managers and scientists want to see is the loss of deep-ocean monitoring data, Thoman said. “The value of this network is that you get oceanographic information from the entire water column,” he added. Fast-warming Alaska has been battered by intense storms of late, including Typhoon Halong, which largely destroyed the Western Alaska villages of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok last October. The mostly Yupik villages were home to more than 1,000 people, many of whom evacuated to Anchorage and are still living there while decisions are made about what to do next: rebuild or move to higher ground. The state is also preparing for El Niño conditions later this summer. Ocean Station Papa’s sensors and other instruments help weather forecasters and emergency response officials know ahead of time when super-storms like Halong are about to come barreling through.