1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

I am writing to express my profound alarm regarding the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) move to "descope" and remove approximately $370 million worth of critical ocean research equipment. I am requesting your immediate intervention to halt these operations, which are scheduled to begin—or have already begun—this month. The decision to pull over 900 sensors from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans—including the Endurance, Pioneer, and Irminger Sea arrays—is a short-sighted blow to our national security, our economy, and our scientific leadership. The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) was designed to provide 25 years of continuous data; dismantling it after only ten years is a massive waste of taxpayer investment. This equipment provides the early warning system for our coastal economies, tracking the marine heatwaves and hypoxic dead zones that directly impact our fisheries and food security. It is difficult to view this sudden withdrawal of infrastructure as anything other than a calculated attempt to suppress the data that documents our changing climate. By silencing these sensors, the administration is effectively trying to blind the public to the physical realities of ocean warming and acidification. This appears to be a desperate effort to shield the fossil fuel industry from accountability and to discredit decades of peer-reviewed climate science by creating permanent, irreparable gaps in our records. Because these removal efforts are imminent this month, time is of the essence. Once these instruments are pulled from the seafloor, the continuous data stream—and the decade of context it provides—is broken forever. I urge you to take immediate action to stay these removals, restore the NSF’s funding for the OOI, and ensure these vital instruments remain in the water. We cannot afford to trade our long-term survival for short-term political convenience.