"The Trump administration is dismantling a $368 million deep-ocean observation system that monitors marine ecosystems and the effects of climate change."
"Democrats said Tuesday they intend to fight the Trump administration’s plan to eradicate a deep-ocean observation system critical to understanding climate change and marine ecosystems.
The system cost $368 million when it was installed in 2016 but now officials want to shut it down, which they say would save $48 million in operating costs each year.
The National Science Foundation declined to say how much it would cost to remove more than 900 remote ocean instruments that are anchored to the ocean bottom in far-flung locations, including in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and an area between Greenland and Iceland known as the Irminger Sea.
The agency will begin sending ships to begin pulling up the instruments later this month, a process that is expected to take about 15 months. The ocean observation system was designed to operate for at least 25 years, meaning the decision would result in the loss of more than a decade of data."
