The U.S. is officially shutting down ocean science observatories and stripping the ocean of protection.

Just recently, I wrote materials about the situation in the United States, where Donald Trump’s administration is massively reducing the conservation status of wildlife. And it is doing so on a large scale, across the entire country, including in the interests of big business: allowing the logging of millions of acres of ancient forests and even the “incidental” killing of polar bears, which are on the brink of extinction.

Despite the fact that, according to confirmed scientific data, nature is in a severe crisis and we are witnessing a global extinction of species on the planet, it seems that nothing can stop influential groups within the systems of state governance.

We are fighting for nature in Russia, and it is important for us to understand objective data from other regions of the world. One planet! One Earth. Unfortunately, many people believe that nature is being destroyed only in our country. But that is not true. This is a global madness affecting the whole world.

More news is coming from the United States: scientists are already sounding the alarm as loudly as they can, trying to draw attention to the problem, but all in vain. The Trump administration is winding down the largest ocean observation program — the Ocean Observatories Initiative. This is a network of approximately 900 instruments, including seafloor stations, buoys, underwater gliders, cables, and sensors. For years, all of this enabled scientists to collect data on temperature, currents, acidity, ocean life, marine heat waves, harmful algal blooms, earthquakes in subduction zones, and the condition of fishery resources. In other words, humanity is now being deprived of a powerful scientific base that was created and deployed over many years.

Science is losing. Capitalism is devouring the last remnants not only of wild nature, but also of everyone who tried to protect it. Just think about it: scientific observatories and modern technical systems were built over many years, with thousands of scientists and experts from around the world working on them. This made it possible to protect the ocean, develop strategies for ecosystem restoration, and prevent future disasters, including earthquakes and, consequently, tsunamis that threaten people themselves. And now all of this is going to be shut down. Scientists will lose their jobs, there will be no funding, and naturally the consequences will be catastrophic. Not only will no one even try to do anything for science, but a rapid rollback of nature protection will begin.

The system itself is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and provides real-time data for scientists, mariners, various agencies, and educational programs. But the current cancellation of all this has been softly described as a “de-scoping” of the project, although in reality it means removing almost all of the underwater infrastructure from several key sites: in the Irminger Sea between Greenland and Iceland, at Station Papa in the North Pacific, and at the Endurance and Pioneer arrays off the coasts of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and North Carolina. According to the project’s announcement, only the Regional Cabled Array is supposed to remain operational.

That is it. The world’s largest ocean observation project will be dismantled. Simply destroyed together with science.

As you know, the ocean stores an enormous share of the heat in the entire planetary climate system. It regulates weather, influences storms, cyclones, El Niño, fisheries, and coastal safety. Now that the U.S. authorities have ordered the sensors to be “switched off” and the scientific work to be cancelled, humanity will no longer be able to see what is happening in the ocean.

I studied the project carefully. It is grand in scale. It was something that gave hope for global positive change in the world. It made one feel pride in humanity.

The ocean observatory system began moving into its operational phase as a major international scientific infrastructure of the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2016, exactly 10 years ago. It was created as a long-term ocean observation network: five arrays, 80 platforms, 900 instruments, more than 200 billion rows of data, nearly 1 billion downloads, and more than 500 scientific papers.

When Donald Trump first came to power, in 2018–2020, his administration immediately began weakening the conservation status of wildlife in the country, as I discussed earlier in my materials. At the same time, the U.S. authorities closed two arrays of the ocean research system: the Argentine Basin Array in the South Atlantic and the Southern Ocean Array. So, as you can see, attempts to destroy this scientific system were already underway back then.

In 2025, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report on the future of ocean science for 2025–2035. I read the materials — the plans were outstanding. Scientists were discussing how to improve the ocean observatory system. The committee itself recommended continuing federal funding for key infrastructure and further developing the science.

And then, on May 21, 2026, at a time when the Trump administration had struck a blow against the entire U.S. nature protection system, the Ocean Observatories Initiative published an official announcement: the U.S. National Science Foundation had begun reducing the scope of the project. The plan provides for the removal of all underwater infrastructure from four major arrays: the Irminger Sea, Station Papa, Endurance, and Pioneer. After being recovered from the water, the equipment is to be stored by the operators until further instructions from the foundation. As you can see, this is serious.

Already on June 3, 2026, major global media outlets reported that the Trump administration was definitively gutting the marine research system and shutting down the project. Earlier, $368 million had been invested in it, and over ten years it had managed to establish outstanding scientific work, including the collection of critically important climate and ocean data.

In effect, humanity has now lost the “eyes and ears” of the entire ocean science system.

On June 15, 2026, a group of U.S. senators — both Democrats and Republicans — demanded that this madness be stopped. But so far there have been no changes: in the United States, a large-scale weakening of all wildlife protection systems is underway, fundamental science is being destroyed, and all of this is being done with open statements that it is necessary in the “interests of big business.”

I strongly recommend that all comrades read the following materials:

• On the large-scale reduction of wildlife protection status in the United States: what exactly is happening and what decisions have been made
• How the United States allowed the “incidental” killing of polar bears for the sake of oil and gas extraction
• And also about how the United States is bringing back the killing of wild animals with cyanide bombs, which had previously been banned

Be sure to share this on social media — pass it on. It is important for us to tell people the truth objectively, without political or social bias. And the truth is that all states have simply gone mad and are tearing apart the remaining fragments of wild nature, while simultaneously destroying conservation science.

© PAVEL PASHKOV