Reading · The Saltwater Chronicles

Hi friends! Happy National Ocean Month!

I’ve been traveling and away from my normal writing schedule for the past few weeks, but excited to be getting back into the swing of things. Let’s get to it:

Trump tears apart ocean monitoring system

Trump’s administration is celebrating National Ocean Month the only way it knows how—by dismantling the system that helps monitor the ocean to provide important scientific data.

The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) was launched in 2016 as a deep-ocean monitoring system. OOI installed more than 900 instruments throughout the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans that were designed to withstand the intense pressure found in the ocean’s depths while also resisting the corrosive nature of saltwater. These sensors are moored and provide real-time data, giving scientists information on things like ocean chemistry, changes in ocean currents (which are key to understanding a changing climate and global weather patterns), and more.

OOI’s system cost around $368 million to build and costs roughly $48 million annually to maintain, a drop in the bucket of the federal budget. It was designed to run for 30 years. The Trump administration is ending it two decades early.

The National Science Foundation, which funds OOI, announced late in May that the sensors would be removed over the next 15 months. Here’s just a short, incomplete list of how this could impact Americans:

We will lose a lot of our ability to predict earthquakes and coastal flooding
Storm forecasting will take a hit
Seafood and maritime industries will lose information about ocean temperatures and water oxygen levels
We lose critical information about ocean currents, particularly the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (which scientists fear may collapse in the coming years, bringing devastating consequences)

And, to make matters worse, we use a lot of the data coming from these sensors to help improve ocean health and fight climate change.

No one should be surprised that the idea to kill OOI can be found in The Heritage Foundation’s infamous document that has turned into Trump’s playbook, Project 2025.

“This reflects the further lack of understanding that the current administration has of scientific value and scientific merit,” argued Craig McLean, who served as the chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under the first Trump administration. “By dismantling such a system, we push the United States back yet again into a rear seat in global scientific leadership.”

What else could we expect from an administration that couldn’t care less about science or protecting the environment?

Read more about this move from the Trump administration here, here, or here.

DATA POINT

Here’s a horrifying stat for you: Nearly 3 in 4 marine protected areas (MPAs) are impacted by wastewater pollution. Not horrified enough? Let’s try again: 73 percent of the more than 12,000 MPAs around the globe aren’t actually protected because they are being so negatively impacted by pollution (like nitrogen) that’s coming from land-based wastewater.

“Wastewater pollution, largely untreated globally, introduces nitrogen and phosphorous nutrients and other contaminants that degrade marine ecosystems, with impacts on coral reefs, seagrass and water quality, and can undermine the effectiveness of MPAs,” explains Mongabay.

Making Waves Weekly: Trump dismantles critical ocean monitoring system

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