The Trump administration is dismantling a decades-long, $380 million ocean monitoring programme that deployed more than 900 deep-sea sensors across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, with removals beginning this month. Run by the National Science Foundation (the primary US federal agency funding scientific research), the network tracked ocean temperature, salinity, currents, marine life, and carbon absorption — data scientists describe as essential to understanding climate change. Researchers warn the shutdown is particularly ill-timed, as scientists are currently monitoring a potentially record-breaking El Niño in the Pacific and signs of instability in AMOC (the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a vast ocean current system whose disruption could trigger severe weather shifts across Europe, the Americas, and Africa).