The National Science Foundation
announced plans in May to decommission the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a nearly $368 million network of scientific instruments that tracks ocean chemistry, wave action, water temperature, salinity, and a host of other metrics.
The real-time information from these ocean observatories helps scientists, fishery managers, coastal hazard planners, and even the
military plan and prepare for the future. Whether that’s calculating how much fish can be harvested or when a marine heatwave or giant wave action may be occurring, the data is used by a plethora of sources.
“It helps us see where we’re going and what’s coming at us,” said Jan Newton, University of Washington affiliate professor of biological oceanography.
The NSF’s decision to pull the observatories from the water has alarm bells ringing in fishing circles of Alaska, home to a $5.3 billion commercial seafood industry that employs nearly 42,000 people, according to a
recent report that McKinley Research Group prepared for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.
Michelle Stratton, executive director of the
Alaska Marine Community Coalition, said the loss of Ocean Station Papa, the deep-ocean observing system situated in the Gulf of Alaska at a depth of nearly 14,000 feet, means the state will lose one of its only systems that documents how the ocean is changing in real time.
“We’re in the middle of salmon crashes, crab collapses, and repeated marine heatwaves, and this decision takes away the data we rely on to understand what’s happening and how to manage these fisheries,” Stratton said.
As for why NSF is pulling the scientific hardware, spokesperson Cassandra Eichner said the decision “aligns with the NSF’s wider strategy of a nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies, as well as smart lifecycle management within its research infrastructure portfolio.”
<small>Source: Ars Technica</small>
