Removing the instruments
could take 15 months. Seismic instruments positioned around an active underwater volcano off Oregon will continue operating until 2028.
Each observation station consists of several moorings that secure long arrays of devices connected to wires. The devices measure ocean currents as well as chemical and biological conditions from the water’s surface down thousands of feet.
The instruments were hardened to resist the pressure of the deep ocean, corrosive seawater as well as marine plants and animals that can foul electronics. Remotely controlled robotic vehicles and gliders around the moorings collect and transmit data to research laboratories.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the network was coordinated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in collaboration with Rutgers University, the University of Washington and Oregon State University. A Woods Hole spokeswoman referred questions to the N.S.F.
It cost $48 million annually to operate the network. The Trump administration repeatedly tried to shutter it, proposing to cut its funding by 80 percent in both 2025 and again in 2026. Congress pushed back, restoring the money.
To try to reduce costs, managers turned off some of the instruments and collected less data, according to a December 2025 presentation about the observatories at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, a nonprofit organization of scientists.
Still, the science foundation moved ahead to decommission the observatory network.
Hilary Palevsky, professor of earth and environmental sciences at Boston College, has been using data from the Irminger instruments for the past decade to better understand how the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Scientists have benefited from downloading data from remote ocean instruments, rather than making difficult, dangerous and expensive trips to sea each year. Pulling up the instruments without a plan to store them or to continue collecting data “is very hasty,” she said.
“One of the real tragedies here is that collecting data effectively at this site was a huge engineering challenge, and it’s not the kind of thing where you can just leave your notes for the next person who comes in,” Dr. Palevsky said. “There’s a lot of expertise that has the potential to be lost.”
The $48 million annual budget for the observation network was small compared with the value of the data it collected for understanding the oceans and the climate, Dr. McLean said.
The observation station off Cape Hatteras, N.C., collected data about coastal currents that influence the weather and commercial fisheries along the U.S. East Coast.
Mike Muglia, professor of coastal studies at East Carolina University, used the data to understand waves, currents and sea life for a marine renewable energy test site in Nags Head, N.C., that was funded by the Energy Department.
Moorings that stretch west off the coast of Newport, Ore., and Grays Harbor, Wash., captured temperature, acidity, and oxygen content data that is key to predicting climate-related environmental changes as well as the health of the region’s commercial fishing industry. Another station is anchored 620 miles offshore in the central Gulf of Alaska.
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