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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.

During a recent NSF CI Compass webinar, Jeffrey Glatstein, OOI Senior Manager of Cyberinfrastructure at WHOI, gave an inside look at how OOI has been rethinking and improving its approach to data delivery. His talk, “Data Delivery User Experience: Is it important to your facility?”, explored how the team has been working to make OOI’s massive data sets more accessible and usable for researchers and stakeholders.

Jeff oversees data systems that handle real-time streams from 900 instruments spread across 80 platforms. Altogether, OOI manages over 175 billion rows of data, 2.8 petabytes of raw data, and more than 13,000 hours of video. Jeff’s team is responsible for ensuring it remains readily accessible and usable by the research community.

Before the overhaul, users relied on a legacy portal called OOINET. While it provided basic functionality, it wasn’t always user-friendly. Users frequently cited long wait times, confusing interfaces, and difficulty locating specific data. These challenges sparked a full-scale effort, beginning in 2018, to improve the user experience from the ground up.

The approach placed strong emphasis on the user experience. Jeff and his team conducted interviews, reviewed previous feedback, and dug into system analytics to identify areas needing improvement. They looked at a range of technical solutions before ultimately partnering with Axiom Data Science to implement a new data access platform – what we now know as the OOI Data Explorer.

The webinar highlighted some of the major tech upgrades involved: Kafka for better message streaming, JupyterHub for advanced data access, Grafana for monitoring, and ERDDAP to improve data delivery. But what really set the project apart was its focus on making things easier and faster for users. Instead of relying only on on-demand plots, the new Data Explorer offers pre-generated visualizations and quicker access to datasets. Search tools were also upgraded, making it easier for users to find exactly what they’re looking for.

Scientists are now able to submit more precise queries, navigate the system with greater confidence, and achieve more effective search results. Jeff noted that the team remains focused on further enhancing the interface, broadening search capabilities, and streamlining the data download process to ensure an even better user experience.

Although Data Explorer has already delivered significant improvements, Jeff emphasized that OOI remains committed to continually enhancing overall functionality. These ongoing efforts reflect a broader mission: ensuring that the vast and valuable data collected from the ocean is not only accessible but also readily usable by the scientific community.

Dear OOI Community,

Today, on World Oceans Day, we join scientists, educators, policymakers, and citizens around the globe to recognize the ocean’s critical role in sustaining life on Earth. From regulating climate to supporting biodiversity, the ocean is at the heart of our planet’s health and understanding it has never been more urgent.

That’s where the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) comes into play.

For over a decade, OOI has enabled transformative ocean science by delivering open, continuous, research-quality data from some of the most dynamic and remote marine environments. Our coastal, global, and cabled arrays provide essential data that fuels research on everything from climate variability to marine heatwaves, earthquakes, ocean acidification, and more. OOI data supports students in classrooms, early-career researchers, seasoned scientists, and international partners.

But this World Oceans Day arrives with a tremendous amount of uncertainty.

As you may know, the President’s FY2026 budget request for the National Science Foundation (NSF) proposes severe cuts to OOI funding, up to 80%, along with language signaling possible decommissioning. These cuts would effectively end our ability to deploy sensors, maintain arrays, and collect new data. It would mark a significant loss for the ocean science community, especially at a time when sustained ocean observations are more important than ever.

Despite these challenges, our mission remains clear: support ocean discovery, empower data-driven research, and serve the broader public good. We continue to carry out fieldwork and deliver data that advances science every day.

On this World Oceans Day, we invite you to explore OOI data, share your stories of how you use it, and help us raise awareness by using #OOIDataMatters on social media. Let’s reaffirm why long-term ocean observation is a public investment that’s worth protecting.

Thank you for being part of this community. We will share updates as new information becomes available.

With appreciation,

Jim Edson