On Monday, Oregon Democratic U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley and Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski led a group of Democratic Senators to urge the National Science Foundation to stop its plans to dismantle a nearly $400 million ocean monitoring network. The Associated Press reported on the letter Sens. Merkley and Murkowski wrote to the NSF, which was signed by nine other U.S. Senators, including Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell of Washington. More than two dozen Democratic U.S. Representatives signed onto a separate letter, per the AP’s reporting, to warn against the “illegal decommissioning” of the Ocean Observatories Initiative.

The OOI is a network of 900 sensors anchored off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and in the North Atlantic. For more than a decade, the instruments have transmitted real-time data that has helped detect coastal flooding events, manage sustainable fisheries, track marine heat waves and more. A memo from the NSF posted last month said the “major descoping” is already underway for the array of instruments managed by Oregon State University, with the removal of most of the rest of the network expected to be completed next summer.

Sen. Merkley joins us to discuss his and other Democratic lawmakers’ efforts to protect the OOI, along with other federal issues affecting his Oregon constituents.

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News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/16/oregon-us-sen-jeff-merkley-on-congressional-effort-to-stop-dismantling-of-nearly-400-million-ocean-monitoring-system/