Ocean Observatories Initiative: Budget Information and Impacts (FY26)

The U.S. National Science Foundation Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) coastal and blue water arrays comprise the most technologically-advanced observational networks in the oceans, with a planned 30-year operational lifespan. A decade of successful operation has resulted in hundreds of scientific publications and myriad new discoveries about our oceans and the  life that they host. In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) opened the doors for outside researchers and industry to add instrumentation to the arrays, resulting in over $70M of external funding from NSF, the Office of Naval Research, NASA, Europe and tens of millions of dollars for additional field campaigns placed within the rich environmental data the arrays provide. The unique long-term and high-density data sets form the foundation for advanced data mining and generation of new AI models advancing our understanding of dynamic ocean processes.

The NSF’s Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) budget request reduces funding for OOI by 80% in its tenth year. The OOI consists of five ocean-based observatories located off the coast of North Carolina, in the Gulf of Alaska, off the coast of Greenland, the Cascadia Margin and Juan de Fuca Ridge off Oregon, and coastal Washington. Together, they deliver continuous, real-time meteorological, biological, oceanographic, and geophysical data from more than 900 instruments. This infrastructure is deployed, operated, and maintained by expert teams of researchers managing cabled, moored, and mobile systems, including underwater gliders, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), autonomous vehicles, and a sophisticated cyberinfrastructure platform for data delivery. The scientific and research impacts of losing OOI would include:

• Eliminating a cost-effective national facility designed and managed to deliver high-quality geological, ocean, and atmosphere data to a broad community of stakeholders.
• Significant loss of world-class engineers and subject matter experts whose skills and knowledge will not be recoverable for years.
• Terminating long-term time series essential for detecting atmospheric, biological, and oceanographic trends that inform policy, risk assessments, and decision-making.
• Ceasing real-time environmental monitoring of ocean temperature, salinity, and circulation events critical to commercial fisheries; ecosystem changes and their impact on ocean biology.
• Suspension of measurements critical to quantify process linkages in methane hydrate environments forming immense energy reservoirs and designated as essential fish habitats.
• Removal of core data used to update and verify ocean and meteorological models forecasting weather, predicting ocean circulation, and supporting coastal planning and ecosystem management. 
• Disruption of support for validation of NASA satellite systems (PACE, SWOT) and oceanographic characterization for Navy maritime domain awareness, research, and modeling.
• Ending OOI’s outreach activities focused on responding to scientific and academic priorities as defined by the community.
• Suspension of the source of critical data sets used by undergraduate and graduate programs developing the next generation of ocean scientists and engineers.

The proposed 80% reduction within the FY26 budget not only represents the loss of $800 million supporting the next 20 years of OOI publicly available data, but also the associated funding of the marine industries and institutions that support it. The loss of OOI would have cascading effects across the research, academic, and maritime sectors: 

• Approximately 100 professionals at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, Oregon State University, and the University of Washington support core OOI operations.
• Roughly half of the OOI budget supports vendors, suppliers, and services in many states including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Oregon, Washington, Montana, South Carolina, California, and Texas.
• The potential abandonment of ~$205 million of taxpayer-funded specialized infrastructure, sensors, and vehicles 
• OOI serves as a national test bed for technical advancements in sensors, vehicles, power generation, and communications, including collaborations with industry and other governmental agencies such as the ONR, Department of Energy and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
• OOI drives over 150 days of vessel operations each year on research, fishing, and commercial charter vessels from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Virginia, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, California, and Alaska.

Sincerely,

The OOI Operations Team

For information about the observatory and the ongoing work, please visit: https://oceanobservatories.org/

For further information or questions, please contact OOI using one of the following methods: https://oceanobservatories.org/contact-us/ or ooiprogram@whoi.edu

Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.