This story was originally published on LincolnChronicle.org and is used with permission.
A decision by the Trump administration to quickly dismantle a complex and massive array of underwater equipment that for 10 years has studied the ocean’s health has stunned and dismayed researchers in Newport and Corvallis.
Research hubs employing hundreds of scientists and based from Newport to Greenland are affected by the National Science Foundation’s decision in May to begin removing sophisticated deep-sea instruments.
“This is something that has never happened before in any Republican or Democratic administration,” said Ed Dever, an Oregon State University professor who oversees one element of a sprawling, $368 million research network now being pulled from the water and mothballed. “All research now will be subject to political review by this administration.”
The foundation, an independent federal agency created in 1950, announced in May it would dismantle four arrays of data-gathering buoys off the coasts of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and Greenland by September 2027.
The arrays are critical elements of the foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative, which went online in 2016 and was expected to continue collecting and disseminating data for years.
The foundation’s own website characterizes the Ocean Observatories Initiative as a “science-driven ocean observing network that delivers real-time data from more than 900 instruments to address critical science questions regarding the world’s ocean.”
That data, the website promised, is “freely available online to anyone with an internet connection.”
But the foundation, in a statement to the Lincoln Chronicle, denied it is canceling the initiative. Instead, it referred to the cuts as “descoping” – a term in the construction industry used to describe the intentional reduction of features or tasks to save money.
“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,” according to the statement sent by foundation spokeswoman Cassandra Eichner.
Axial Seamount OK for now
A fifth and final ocean research element is not being cut, at least for now.
Formally known as the Cabled Axial Seamount Array, it relies on seafloor cables to monitor the Axial Seamount, a highly active submarine volcano on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, about 300 miles west of Astoria.
One of the array’s principal investigators is Oregon State University professor William Chadwick, who said the foundation has promised to maintain the cable observatory until at least 2028.
But Chadwick, like his colleagues, said the scope of the larger cuts is both disappointing and dispiriting.
“It seems like science is under attack,” he said. “It makes things seem really bleak.”
The cuts, Chadwick added, are coming at the very moment that data from the Ocean Observatories Initiative’s various arrays are needed most. He noted, for instance, that a brewing El Nino – the warm phase of a multiyear climate pattern that supercharges temperatures across the globe – will likely become the strongest ever recorded.
“What we know for certain is that the ocean is changing rapidly,” he said. “The measurements document and quantify that change, and losing that long-term monitoring of what’s happening in our oceans is a real loss.”
The offshore array
Dever’s piece of the Ocean Observatories Initiative is known as the “cabled endurance array.” It includes research sites and platforms at various depths and measures such things as ocean circulation, coastal ecosystems and climate variability.
Each mooring, Dever said, includes more than $1 million in equipment, which will now be stored in warehouses in case decisions are ever made to redeploy it.
Two of the array’s three research buoys, located off Newport and Waldport, have already been removed from the ocean. The final buoy is scheduled to be pulled from the water by the middle of next week.
In addition, a number of underwater gliders that operated around the moorings to collect and transmit data to researchers are also being shut down.
Ripples from the cuts extend even further, Dever said. Buoys in need of repainting to better withstand the harsh marine environment were often sent to the Port of Toledo’s shipyard. Similarly, jobs to fabricate and repair platform parts often went to machine shops in Corvallis.
“In the past, funding for these types of things was one of the least controversial issues ever to come before Congress,” he said. “It was something that everyone could get behind. It’s pretty shocking to see this administration going after science like this.”
Jack Barth, also an OSU oceanography professor, has spent four decades studying various aspects of ocean science. One of his current projects is as a principal investigator for the ocean initiative’s cyber infrastructure center, which collects and distributes data to researchers around the world.
That center, like most other elements of the program, is also being closed as a result of the Trump administration’s new marching orders.
Barth, like his colleagues, stressed how difficult it is to conduct ocean research, given conditions that are as unpredictable as they are dangerous. The advanced robotics and other state-of-the-art equipment employed by the imitative, he said, completely changed the way such research could be conducted.
“These systems are out there year-round, successfully working in all conditions,” he said. “They do their job and get this valuable data back to us, which is just a remarkable feat.”
Yet for all those terabytes of raw data, the Ocean Observatories Initiative system also supports the everyday needs of both commercial and recreational fishing interests, Barth said. That is what drew him to this part of the job two decades ago — when fishermen were stumped as to why they were pulling up pots that held nothing but dead Dungeness crab.
“We looked into it and tracked it back to low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water,” he said. “Understanding where that was happening and why, which this equipment accomplished, allowed us to show where this was occurring and, more importantly, where it wasn’t. In other words, it allowed us to pinpoint for folks where the fishing was good.”
He added, “In addition to the many other effects of this decision, what we know for sure is that it will impact the day-to-day lives of fishermen. They are losing the ability to see what’s going on out there.”
Political reply
A political response to the shutdown decision is likely, although its chances of success, especially given the speed with which platforms and buoys are being removed, appears limited.
Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and a handful of his Democratic colleagues say they intend to try.
“The U.S. has a scientific wonder – 900 ocean sensors that measure temperature, currents, salinity, waves, and even biological factors like chlorophyll and phytoplankton,” Merkley wrote in a statement to the Lincoln Chronicle. “The resulting data is a treasure trove for understanding the ocean including sea life habitat and climate change.”
It is the latter concept that is actually driving the administration to try to undo the OOI system, he said.
“For that reason alone, Trump is planning to tear the sensors out of the ocean despite their enormous value to our fisheries,” Merkley continued. “This is enormously damaging to our national interests – and stunningly stupid – and I will do everything I can to stop it.”
Affect on Hatfield center
What remains to be done now, barring some miraculous turnaround in decision-making, is ensuring that as much of the equipment as possible is retrieved and stored, according to National Science Foundation dictates, is as sound a manner as possible for some possible future redeployment.
Some of that responsibility falls to Mark Farley, who directs business operations at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. And, almost daily, he said, the job does nothing but grow in scope and potential difficulty.
“The loss of data, infrastructure and jobs are all fairly evident,” Farley said. “But here at the center? We’re not riddled with extra storage space. And these buoys are huge, as in semi-truck size. They are federal property and we know they aren’t headed back to Washington D.C. So, obviously, there’s a lot we still have to figure out.”
The impact of the closure decision has been no less significant on students and staff at the center. Projects once funded for years now are going dark, taking with them the scores of professional researchers, graduate students and post-doctoral candidates that made them possible.
“At Hatfield alone we have about 450 people, with another 400 or so on the main campus in Corvallis,” Farley said. “It’s a significant footprint for the West Coast. It’s like a small town is just folding up and going away.”
And if someone came up with the millions needed to somehow revive it all tomorrow?
“That money relies on a long budget cycle and then needs principal investigators to write the grants and then hire the graduate students to make it work,” he said. “A break of this magnitude doesn’t just get turned back on. It would take five to seven years to crank up this machine again.
“It’s heartbreaking and capricious,” Farley said. “And there’s no road map that I can follow that will bring it all back.”
Dana Tims is an Oregon freelance writer who contributes regularly to Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at DanaTims24@gmail.com
