By admin 
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.
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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 to last for three decades.
The system has more than 900 instruments that track ocean conditions, including circulation and currents, temperature, marine life, weather events and data used to manage seafood harvests. Under the Trump administration, the National Science Foundation plans in the coming year to remove instruments from the waters off Alaska, as well as Washington state, Oregon, North Carolina and Greenland. The first removal is scheduled for Tuesday in waters off Oregon.
In a sent Monday to Acting NSF Director Brian Stone, Murkowski and nine other senators urged the agency to reverse the decision.
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“Eliminating most of this complex ocean monitoring system threatens the safety of our coastal communities while undermining our nation’s ability to monitor coastal environments, marine currents, and extreme weather events,” they wrote.
The system is especially important this year because of the powerful El Nino system that is developing in the Pacific Ocean and is poised to disrupt widespread weather patterns, the letter said. “The OOI system delivers crucial information about our ocean patterns and weather, reaching and touching all Americans. The effort to dismantle this vital network, jeopardizing decades of prior research, must be reversed in order to prioritize public safety,” the letter said.
The system is also of particular importance to Alaska’s multibillion-dollar fishing industry, which has objected to the NSF move.
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A separate to Stone from 25 U.S. House Democrats called the decision “absurd.”