At a moment scientists most need to understand what is happening in the ocean, some of the systems built to observe it are being switched off or allowed to shrink.
Last month, it was revealed that the US government under President Donald Trump was shutting down much of a high-tech network of ocean monitoring equipment that cost USD 368 million. The agency responsible said it was just tweaking the “scope of its support” – but the scientific community has reacted with outrage.
The fear among researchers is that this is not an isolated loss, but part of a much wider problem. The ocean is central to understanding the world, and where it is headed. Yet the long-term systems to observe it are increasingly vulnerable.
This means gaps in understanding the carbon cycle and global warming. It means a lack of knowledge in weather predictions and fisheries. Communities that need this information could suffer.
“We are really going blind in terms of how we understand the ocean, how we see the ocean and how we can advance the protection of the ocean,” says Karina von Schuckmann, who works on ocean science and policy at Mercator Ocean International, a non-profit dedicated to digital oceanography.
Von Schuckmann is also co‑chair of the scientific committee for the Starfish Barometer, an annual report on the state of the ocean. Alongside warming waters, plastic pollution, species loss and other pressures, this year’s release lists a less-publicised threat: “Major in-situ ocean observing systems are shrinking [and] reducing ocean protection capacity.”
Blown out of the water
In May, US government agency the National Science Foundation said it was undertaking a “major descoping” of the Ocean Observatories Initiative. This collection of over 900 sensors, spread over five sites in the Pacific and the Atlantic, includes moored equipment and autonomous underwater vehicles and gliders. These arrays monitor temperature, pressure, CO2, pH and other properties of the ocean.
Now, four of them are set to be removed over the next 15 months, with some equipment already being pulled out of the Pacific.
“Walking away from a USD-368-million investment in a state-of-the-art system, a feat of engineering already paid for by the American people, is absolutely myopic,” said Chris Robbins, associate director of scientific initiatives at the Ocean Conservancy NGO.
In a post on Facebook, oceanographer Dawn Wright, chief scientist at geographic information company Esri, was even blunter: “Screaming with rage and frustration at this stupidity and lawlessness but NOT giving up!”
A National Science Foundation spokesperson told Dialogue Earth by email that it was “not cancelling the Ocean Observatories Initiative” but “planned to adjust the scope of its support for select elements”.
The dismantling of the initiative follows numerous moves by the US administration under Donald Trump to shutter, defund or otherwise limit scientific research on climate change-related issues. This has included slashing grant funding and attempting to shutter influential climate lab the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.
But, even if there is less drama attached, this is not just a US problem. Wider ocean observations also appear to be becoming scarcer, with UK and other European countries’ funding under pressure, researchers told Dialogue Earth.
Temperatures up, observations down
The Starfish Barometer offers an overview of the current state of the ocean by bringing together published, peer-reviewed science. It notes that in 2025 there were an estimated 120,000 in-situ observations on the physical and chemical state of the ocean, largely driven by autonomous monitoring via systems such as drifting buoys.
While autonomous systems are doing well, the authors note that major monitoring networks including moored buoys and observations from research ships have declined since the pandemic, driven down by constrained budgets and a shortage of experienced staff, “reflecting broader constraints on ocean science capacity.”
The cuts by the US administration are playing a part in this broader predicament. The team cites a warning from 2025 by several scientists that disruptions in US federal funding and research are undermining science and multilateral cooperation.
This, the second iteration of the Starfish Barometer, is the first to include numbers on ocean observations, said Marina Lévy, an oceanographer at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) who chairs the Starfish scientific committee along with von Schuckmann.
Acknowledging widespread concerns over the US cuts, she added there are already signs that observations are shrinking globally.
“The question is: how is this going to evolve in future? Observing the ocean is key to being able to protect it,” she said.
Helen Findlay, a biological oceanographer at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, said the report matches her experiences.
Measurements of carbon dioxide at the ocean surface have declined in recent years with the community blaming a lack of funding from European countries, she said, and this is leading to problems with calculating the global carbon budget, meaning human-caused emissions balanced against those taken up by the sea and land. In the UK there has also been a decline in real-terms funding of long-term observing systems – with no increases in budgets to reflect inflation or rising costs, she added.
“Routine, long-term observations are not ‘sexy’ science that are easy to find funding for. Trying to continue a long-term observatory when you have to apply for funding every three or five years, in an increasingly competitive market, is tough,” Findlay told Dialogue Earth.
“The cuts in the US will have repercussions for global ocean science… The rest of the world needs to pick up the shortfall. The problem is that in real-terms, cuts are being made in many countries.”
That is the danger now facing ocean science, across the world. The ocean is absorbing heat, carbon and risk on a planetary scale. If the systems that track those changes are weakened, the loss will be felt far beyond science: in weather forecasts, fisheries, climate calculations and the protection of communities that depend on the sea.
