June 16, 2026 — Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, is among several members of Congress trying to prevent the National Science Foundation from dismantling portions of an instrument system that monitors the nation’s oceans.
The National Science Foundation plans to pull out much of the instrumentation in the Ocean Observatories Initiative system, which began operating in 2016 and was intended to last for three decades.
June 11, 2026 –The National Science Foundation has begun dismantling a major ocean monitoring network more than a decade earlier than planned.
Some scientists say it will be a “tragic” loss of crucial information about the world’s warming oceans.
The dismantling will end most of the monitoring in one of the nation’s most advanced, continuous observing systems less than halfway through its intended 25-year lifespan. Researchers warn that the loss of measurements will limit efforts to better understand ocean phenomena, including marine heat waves, hurricanes, fisheries and long-term shifts in climate, even as the oceans reach record-warm temperatures.
The Science Foundation-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative oversees web-like arrays of instruments and sensors from the surface to the sea floor in remote ocean regions. The foundation will remove four of its last five arrays by the end of summer 2027, according to a statement by Jim Edson, a principal investigator for the initiative and senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
June 8, 2026 — The Alaska Marine Community Coalition is raising concerns over plans to dismantle much of the federal Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), arguing that the loss of long-term ocean monitoring could reduce critical information used to understand changing conditions in Alaska’s fisheries.
In a recent statement, the coalition said the National Science Foundation plans to remove in-water equipment from four of the five OOI sites over the next 15 months, including Ocean Station Papa in the Gulf of Alaska, located roughly 620 miles offshore. The network has collected continuous oceanographic data since 2016, while Station Papa itself has served as one of the North Pacific’s longest-running ocean monitoring locations.
The coalition said the station provides information on deep-water temperatures, ocean chemistry, currents and biological conditions that help scientists track changes affecting species including salmon, halibut, crab and pollock.
June 3, 2026 — The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is dismantling a deep-ocean observation system put in place over a decade ago, leaving gaps in scientific data that assists in everything from storm forecasting to fishery health.
The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) consists of six different underwater monitoring arrays that the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) said is the most advanced continuously-operated observing systems in the world. Using hundreds of different instruments, the arrays provide openly-accessible data to oceanographers, researchers, educators, and the public.
February 6, 2026 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:
Last week, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) highlighted the sustainability of U.S. fisheries with new data from 2025 showing that, by volume, 90 percent of the U.S. catch is MSC-certified and meets the organization’s sustainability guidelines. Among the organizations highlighted are industry members of the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS).
SCEMFIS, a member of the National Science Foundation’s Industry-
Wayne Reichle, the Owner and President of Lund’s Fisheries, a member of SCEMFIS’s Industry Advisory Board (IAB), is quoted by the MSC in their announcement:
“For nearly ten years, Lund’s Fisheries, Inc. has collaborated with the MSC, and our partner conformity assessment bodies (CABs), to assure domestic and international markets vitally important to our long-term success that the seafood we produce is managed sustainably based on rigorous, annual, scientific and monitoring reviews. Our MSC-certified Atlantic sea scallop, Atlantic and Pacific squid, and Atlantic menhaden purse seine, scup, fluke and black sea bass trawl fisheries have provided us with access to markets that would not otherwise be available to our third-generation fishing company, to the benefit of our community, our employees and our company and independent fishermen whose cooperation we depend upon each day as we plan for the future.”
The MSC “sets criteria to ensure healthy fish stocks, minimal harmful impacts on marine ecosystems, and to promote effective and responsive management.” 62 species in the U.S. are MSC certified, with more than 1,300 certified products available in the U.S. market.
In 2025, MSC became the newest member of the SCEMFIS IAB. In joining, MSC praised the work the Center has done for seafood sustainability, with MSC’s Anthony Mastitski, Fisheries Outreach Manager, saying, “SCEMFIS plays a pivotal role in advancing scientific research across U.S. fisheries, including many that are MSC-certified. Thanks in part to SCEMFIS, these fisheries have maintained their certifications and continue to offer sustainable seafood options to consumers at home and abroad.”
In addition to having the MSC and several MSC-certified fisheries represented on the Center’s Board, SCEMFIS research has directly improved the sustainability of many of these fisheries. Among other issues, SCEMFIS-supported science has provided new insights into how climate change has impacted Atlantic surfclam and ocean quahog, and how to best estimate their ages and populations; an analysis of Gulf predators’ diets that better defines the role of Gulf menhaden as a forage species in the food web; updating the maturity and fecundity schedules for Atlantic menhaden and addressed improvements in the Atlantic menhaden stock assessment; and the economic impact of the Atlantic surfclam, scup, Gulf menhaden, longfin squid, and summer flounder fisheries.
October 17, 2025 — Aquaculture/Fisheries Professor Marta Gomez-Chiarri is leading efforts at the University of Rhode Island to help position New England as a national leader in the seafood industry, hoping to secure final funding through the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Regional Innovation Engines program. URI joins a consortium of regional partners, collectively known as NSPIRE, selected as finalists in the national competition.
Gomez-Chiarri, in URI’s Fisheries, Animal and Veterinary Sciences Department, is the lead faculty member on the finalist team in a competitive process which began with almost 300 letters of intent and is now down to just 15 finalists. She’ll work closely with principal investigator Jake Kritzer at Northeastern Regional Association of Coastal Ocean Observing Systems (NERACOOS) and a large team of senior investigators from several partner institutions.
“Hearing we were picked as finalists was extremely rewarding,” she says. “It validated all the hard work that our team put into this proposal.”
“I commend URI for being selected to move forward in NSF’s Regional Innovation Engines program. Rhode Island is a leader when it comes to our sustainable aquaculture and seafood harvesters, and this funding will help Ocean State researchers better support our local fishermen and shellfishermen and support resilient growth of this industry across our region,” says U.S. Senator Jack Reed, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee who has delivered millions of dollars in federal investments for Rhode Island’s aquaculture and seafood industries and research.
October 10, 2025 — A collaboration between New England fisheries groups, universities, research institutions, government agencies, blue tech businesses, and others is working to level-up the region’s seafood industry. The New England Seafood Partnership for Innovations, Research and Engagement (NSPIRE) is in the running for a big boost from the National Science Foundation.
NSPIRE is working on several fronts to make the local seafood industry more competitive and sustainable. It’s one of 15 finalists in the running for the NSF Engines program, which comes with $15 million in funding over two years.
January 27, 2023 — A handful of hyper-productive fisheries provide sustenance to a billion people and employ tens of millions. These fisheries occur on the eastern edges of the world’s oceans—off the West Coast of the U.S., the Canary Islands, Peru, Chile, and Benguela. There, a process called upwelling brings cold water and nutrients to the surface, which in turn supports large numbers of larger sea creatures that humans depend on for sustenance.
A new project led by researchers at Texas A&M University is seeking to understand how changes to the climate and oceans will impact fisheries in the U.S. and around the world.
“We’re interested in how climate change is going to alter upwelling and how the sustainability of the future fisheries will be impacted,” said Ping Chang, Louis & Elizabeth Scherck Chair in Oceanography at Texas A&M University (TAMU). “It turns out that when we increase the resolution of our climate models, we find that the upwelling simulation becomes much closer to reality.”
Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the project aims to develop medium to long-term fishery forecasts, driven by some of the highest-resolution coupled climate forecasts ever run. It is one of the 16 Convergence Accelerator Phase 1 projects that address the ‘Blue Economy’—the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth. Convergence projects integrate scholars from different science disciplines.
January 3, 2022 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:
The Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS) has funded $126,000 in new marine science research for 2022. The funds, approved by the members of the Center’s Industry Advisory Board at its annual fall meeting, will support new, much-needed research on prominent fisheries such as thread herring, ocean quahogs, squid, and surfclams.
Part of the National Science Foundation’s Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers program, SCEMFIS connects marine scientists with members of the fishing industry to identify scientific priorities for better understanding commercially important fish species, and directs industry funding to projects that study them. Since its founding, SCEMFIS has promoted research that has increased our understanding of these species, and improved their management.
The following research projects were approved by SCEMFIS for 2022:
About SCEMFIS
SCEMFIS utilizes academic and fisheries resources to address urgent scientific problems limiting sustainable fisheries. SCEMFIS develops methods, analytical and survey tools, datasets, and analytical approaches to improve sustainability of fisheries and reduce uncertainty in biomass estimates. SCEMFIS university partners, University of Southern Mississippi (lead institution), and Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, are the academic sites. Collaborating scientists who provide specific expertise in finfish, shellfish, and marine mammal research, come from a wide range of academic institutions including Old Dominion University, Rutgers University, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, University of Maryland, and University of Rhode Island.
The need for the diverse services that SCEMFIS can provide to industry continues to grow, which has prompted a steady increase in the number of fishing industry partners. These services include immediate access to science expertise for stock assessment issues, rapid response to research priorities, and representation on stock assessment working groups. Targeted research leads to improvements in data collection, survey design, analytical tools, assessment models, and other needs to reduce uncertainty in stock status and improve reference point goals.
September 25, 2020 — The following was released by the National Science Foundation:
Integrating local norms and fishers’ knowledge into regulations helps increase trust in management institutions, and can make it easier for co-management to work.
Those were the findings of U.S. National Science Foundation-funded research by University of Maine researchers Kara Pellowe and Heather Leslie. The scientists looked at the interplay between formal and informal institutions and implications for the co-management potential of a small-scale Mexican fishery.
The journal Marine Policy published their results.
Pellowe and Leslie contend that conflicts between formal institutions, such as government agencies, and informal institutions, such as unwritten agreements among families and friends, can represent a significant barrier to effective fisheries management.
They examined the potential for co-management, where power and decision-making are shared by fisheries managers and fishers, in a fishery that is currently managed through top-down control. They concluded that integrating local norms and knowledge into formal regulations, along with broadened community participation, are necessary precursors to co-management. Doing so would result in more successful fisheries management.
Pellowe regularly traveled to Baja California Sur, Mexico, to work closely with fishers, managers and stakeholders in the Mexican chocolate clam (Megapitaria squalida) fishery in Loreto Bay National Park, on the Baja peninsula.
Like the Maine lobster, the Mexican chocolate clam is a culturally and economically important species, providing food, income and cultural value to many communities in Baja.