NYT: Trump Administration Backs Off Plan to End Ocean Monitoring

The Trump administration is abandoning its plan to dismantle a $368 million ocean monitoring system critical to understanding climate change and marine ecosystems, bowing to a bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill -- the Senate passed a bipartisan bill on Wednesday to block the removal of deep-sea monitoring instruments. The National Science Foundation had said in May that it would begin removing hundreds of underwater instruments this month that collect data on coastal flooding, marine heat waves and other climate and weather events. But the agency announced on Thursday that it will pause efforts to take apart the system, known as the Ocean Observatories Initiative, while convening an expert panel to determine its future. MORE (Paywall?)