News

OOI, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) is preparing to deploy a wave energy converter (WEC) device on the Pioneer MAB central surface mooring. The project aims to demonstrate how wave energy can provide reliable, renewable power for sustained ocean observation.

A recent visit brought together the team, which is comprised of experts from OOI, WPTO, Sandia National Laboratories, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Evergreen Innovations, Johns Hopkins University, East Carolina University, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to focus on engineering validation for the Pioneer WEC, a critical step before at-sea testing later in the fall.

During the visit, the team carried out subsystem testing, integrated the WEC with the buoy, assembled the full system, and tested it under varied scenarios. This rigorous preparation is crucial for de-risking the upcoming deployment.

This project represents an important step toward persistent ocean observing systems. By reducing reliance on ship-based servicing and enabling longer-term autonomous operation, wave energy has the potential to transform how sustained ocean science is conducted.

Dear OOI Community,

We want to share with you important updates about the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) for the upcoming year. The U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) FY2026 budget request proposes a reduction in funding for OOI. While this is not final given the ongoing congressional appropriations process, it is important to share with the community the potential impact to operations starting in October 2025.

Since its inception, the OOI has been a cornerstone of sustained ocean observation – designed as a 30-year program to provide transformative science and open-access data. Now entering its tenth year, the OOI has grown into an important community resource that supports discovery, advances research, facilitates technology development, and fosters collaboration across the ocean community. Our commitment remains to ensure continuity of operations, manage this essential resource, and sustain the research and innovation it enables.

Despite the budget uncertainty, the OOI Leadership team’s commitment remains strong. We will continue to keep you informed as the congressional appropriations and agency implementation process unfolds and will share more details as they become available. We are actively working with NSF to explore strategies for long-term stability that secure the observatory’s future. In parallel, we are seeking new partnerships and opportunities to broaden support and strengthen the program’s foundation. We continue to encourage research proposals to use the present and historical OOI observations, and when appropriate leverage in-water assets.

If the president’s budget hold results in reduced NSF funding, we remain committed to maintaining core capabilities that safeguard high-value observations and ensure community access.

• Providing data delivery and distribution from all active instruments, including real-time data where enabled, and data from the past ten years of deployments from our Data Center.
• Operating the Regional Cabled Array (RCA) infrastructure to ensure continued access to the seafloor and a reduced set of water-column data from the deep ocean.
• Operating a scaled-down Pioneer Mid-Atlantic Bight Array with two service cruises and refurbished infrastructure this upcoming year.
• Continuing to provide data from the currently deployed infrastructure at Station Papa and the Irminger Sea Array. The Global Arrays are being operated at reduced sampling to extend their lifetime for the upcoming year.
• Maintaining limited Endurance Array capability by operating the Newport line deep glider during October and November 2025 and leaving the Oregon Shelf mooring in the water until spring 2026 (these activities are exceptions to the broader suspension of Endurance operations planned after Fall 2025 asset recovery).
• Continuing investments in OOI Data Services, including improvements to the Data Explorer and data processing tools.
• Meeting critical obligations such as permitting, reporting, and cybersecurity improvements.

To align with the potentially reduced budget in FY 2026, OOI operations will be scaled back in several areas. This includes the suspension of operation of the Endurance Array after asset recovery in Fall 2025, with the exception of operating the Newport line deep glider during October and November 2025 and leaving the Oregon Shelf mooring in the water until spring 2026; reduction or suspension of the glider and AUV operations; and suspension of the maintenance cruises for the global and cabled arrays in the upcoming project year.

We recognize these potential changes could disrupt coverage and continuity, particularly for studies that depend on near real-time data, cross-shelf observations, and sustained time series. Collaborations with partner institutions and contributions to regional observing networks may also be affected.

At the same time, the OOI remains committed to serving the community by preserving as much scientific capability as possible within the available funding.

In closing, we encourage you to actively highlight the value and impact of OOI by including it in your proposals, publications, presentations, and conversations with colleagues. Your engagement is vital to demonstrate the scientific impact and wide-ranging applications enabled by the OOI, underscoring its importance as a resource for the oceanographic community.

For any questions related to the OOI, please reach out to the Leadership Team at ooi@whoi.edu.

Sincerely,

The OOI Team

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 National Science Foundation

The CI Compass Fellowship Program (CICF), funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), prepares undergraduate students for careers in cyberinfrastructure through both training and applied research opportunities. The program begins with a 12-week virtual Spring Program, where students are introduced to skills essential for cyberinfrastructure careers at NSF Major or Mid-scale Facilities. Following the spring training, students may apply for the Summer Program, which places a limited number of Fellows in hands-on projects at collaborating NSF facilities.

Through this pathway, CI Compass Fellows Ejay Aguirre and Dylan Hermosillo earned internships with OOI this summer, where they applied their training to advance projects at the intersection of ocean science, cyberinfrastructure, and data analysis.

One project focused on connecting large-scale climate phenomena with accessible environmental data. Ejay Aguirre, an undergraduate at the University of Utah, integrated datasets from OOI, Ocean Networks Canada (ONC), and the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) to investigate how the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is reflected across different monitoring sites. Using Python and Jupyter Notebook, he built a workflow for retrieving, cleaning, and comparing data across infrastructures. The analysis revealed that site characteristics, particularly latitude, influence the visibility of ENSO signals, with higher-latitude sites exhibiting weaker short-term patterns. Future work includes expanding the study to additional sites for broader spatial coverage, incorporating other climate indicators such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO), and publishing a publicly accessible, fully documented Jupyter Notebook to support reusability within the research community.

The second project addressed the challenge of monitoring ice conditions in the North Atlantic. Dylan Hermosillo, who will begin a PhD program in Bioinformatics at North Carolina State University, developed a convolutional neural network for ice detection using images collected by cameras mounted on a surface buoy at the OOI Irminger Array. The project stemmed from anomalies in buoy sensor data caused by iced-over instruments, which prompted the addition of cameras as supplementary monitoring tools. He worked with approximately 256,000 images, applying preprocessing steps such as pixel normalization and consistency checks. Tools like Dyno v2 and Facebook AI’s image similarity search were used to sort and filter the dataset. While challenges remained with image resolution and varying camera perspectives, the project demonstrated the feasibility of using buoy-mounted cameras to detect ice flows. Future directions include applying similar methods to cloud separation studies and exploring the integration of instruments such as solar meters to enhance atmospheric observations.

Reflecting on their progress, Jeffrey Glatstein, Senior Manager of Cyberinfrastructure at OOI noted, “Both Ejay and Dylan demonstrated how student researchers can make meaningful contributions when given the opportunity, providing fresh perspectives and impactful solutions that help advance OOI’s mission.”

As the CI Compass Fellowship Program continues to grow, it provides an important opportunity for developing the next generation of scientists and researchers engaged in cyberinfrastructure and data-intensive science.

Learn more about the CI Compass Fellowship Program by visiting the CI Compass website.

For those interested in the application process of the program, please visit the CI Compass Fellowship Program’s application process webpage.