{"id":13870,"date":"2026-06-12T01:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T01:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=13870"},"modified":"2026-06-12T01:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T01:23:07","slug":"oceans-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=13870","title":{"rendered":"Oceans, Away"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By KIM BELLARD<\/p>\n

It probably didn\u2019t show up on your calendar, but Monday was World Ocean Day<\/a>. It\u2019s a day meant to catalyze \u201ccollective action for a healthy ocean and a stable climate,\u201d and has been around since 2002 (although the U.N. didn\u2019t officially recognize it until 2008). Its website claims a network of over 2,000 organizations, in 180 countries.<\/p>\n

I wish we had more to celebrate.<\/p>\n

Many have recognized the irony of humans calling our planet \u201cEarth,\u201d when, in fact, 71% of its surface is covered with water. Even more amazing, oceans account for 99% of the biosphere<\/a>. We come from the ocean and still owe much of our existence to it.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, these are not good times for oceans, and we\u2019re to blame. The most recent World Ocean Assessment<\/a> from the U.N. highlights:<\/p>\n

The ocean matters to everyone, everywhere;<\/p>\n

The ocean is under intensifying stress;<\/p>\n

Climate change is transforming conditions;<\/p>\n

Biodiversity is declining across nearly every marine habitat;<\/p>\n

Pollution is widespread and increasing;<\/p>\n

Ocean food systems are threatened.<\/p>\n

The report concludes: \u201cThe coming decade is decisive: without rapid, coordinated global action, ocean health will continue to decline, threatening climate stability, biodiversity resilience, food security,\u00a0livelihoods\u00a0and the wellbeing of billions.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think about this in light of last month\u2019s announcement<\/a> by the National Science Foundation that it was \u201cdescoping\u201d the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI)<\/a> Major Facility, beginning next week. That\u2019s a $368 million deep-ocean observation system \u201cthat delivers real-time data from more than 900 instruments to address critical science questions regarding the world\u2019s oceans.\u201d Some 900 instruments will be removed, in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Michael England, a spokesman for the National Science Foundation, told<\/a> Eric Niiler of The New York Times<\/em> that the decision \u201caligns with N.S.F.\u2019s wider strategy to have a nimbler approach to prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies as well as a deliberate approach to smart life cycle management within its portfolio of research infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, we (the Trump Administration) didn\u2019t invent it, and it relates to climate change, so we don\u2019t want it.<\/p>\n

Craig McLean, who was the acting chief scientist at the NOAA during the first Trump term, told Mr. Niiler: \u201cThis reflects the further lack of understanding that the current administration has of scientific value and scientific merit. By dismantling such a system, we push the United States back yet again into a rear seat in global scientific leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientists are aghast. Sabrina Speich, an expert in global ocean monitoring at the Ecole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure (ENS) in Paris and chair of the ocean expert panel of the Global Climate Observing System, told The Guardian<\/em><\/a>: \u201cOcean heat content is the most robust indicator of climate change we have \u2013 not just of what is happening in the ocean, but of the entire climate system. Lose them, and you lose your ability to track not just ocean warming but the climate system as a whole \u2013 they are a proxy for variables that become unavailable the moment the observations stop.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

John P Abraham, professor of engineering at the University of St Thomas, calle<\/a>d the move \u201cpenny-wise, pound foolish,\u201d adding: \u201cThe US government wants to save less than a billion in sensors, which are the eyes and ears of the ocean. We have hundreds of billions in climate costs per year. The cost of the observation system is a fraction of the climate costs from hurricanes and storms that hit the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWalking away from a $368-million investment in a state-of-the-art system, a feat of engineering already paid for by the American people, is absolutely myopic,\u201d Chris Robbins, the associate director of scientific initiatives for Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit group, complained to Mr. Niiler.<\/p>\n

Democrats in Congress vow<\/a> to fight the cuts, but lack the votes to do anything. The E.U. said<\/a> it was stepping up its ocean monitoring efforts, independent of the U.S.\u2019s action, with its OceanEye initiative, but that will be a long term process and won\u2019t immediately offset the U.S. cuts.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a new study<\/a> has found that a \u201ccold blob\u201d in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation may suggest big changes ahead: \u201ca further weakening of Atlantic heat transport in future climate change could lead to serious impacts on climate and weather conditions in Europe and other parts of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure doesn\u2019t seem like a great time to lose our ocean monitoring abilities.<\/p>\n

Even worse are the Trump Administration\u2019s gung-ho attitude<\/a> towards deep sea mining. It is well known that the ocean\u2019s floor has lots of valuable minerals, and some mining companies are delirious at the prospect of strip mining them. The NOAA has started mapping some 30,000 square nautical miles off American Samoa, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)\u00a0is investigating several other offshore areas, both with the intent of allowing deep sea mining.<\/p>\n

The U.S. may even<\/a> issue permits for seabeds not owned by the U.S., or any country.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one has done commercial-scale deep-sea mining,\u201d said<\/a> Becca Loomis, a staff attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, \u201c\u201cThis would be brand new, and they\u2019re kind of forging ahead. Rushing ahead with this industry is really scary for the ocean, the ocean ecosystem, for people who rely on fisheries.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A new review<\/a> of existing studies found how relatively little we understand about the impacts of such mining, but what little we do know suggest there are large and longstanding impacts on biodiversity.<\/p>\n

Just this week, a Greenpeace study<\/a> found thriving new-to-us ecosystems in the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge \u201cWe barely understand how these communities function, which environmental factors influence their distribution, or how sensitive they are to human disturbances. Likewise, our discovery of several sponge species that are potentially new to science highlights how little is known about Arctic ecosystems, said Dr Julio A. Diaz, deep-sea researchers, Museum of Evolution at Uppsala University.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe deep sea mining industry has not yet started to tear up the seabed, and we therefore have the opportunity to stop an environmental disaster before it happens.\u201d said Dr. Sandra Sch\u00f6ttner, Chief Scientist, Greenpeace International.<\/p>\n

One can imagine how little the Trump Administration \u2013 whose mantra is \u201cdrill, baby, drill\u201d \u2013 cares about such impacts.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m thrilled that there is such a thing as World Ocean Day, but it\u2019s hard to celebrate it in the midst of all that is happening to degrade and disrupt our oceans. I\u2019m quite certain that the oceans will be around long after humans will be, but it\u2019s unfathomable about how much damage we\u2019ll do to them while we are.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By KIM BELLARD It probably didn\u2019t show up on your calendar, but Monday was World Ocean Day. It\u2019s a day meant to catalyze \u201ccollective action for a healthy ocean and a stable climate,\u201d and has been around since 2002 (although the U.N. didn\u2019t officially recognize it until 2008). Its website claims a network of over…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13870"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}