WASHINGTON, June 17 -- Sen. Jeff Merkley issued the following press release:
Today, U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) took to the Senate floor to successfully pass their bipartisan legislation that pauses the reckless dismantling of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), a complex system of 900 ocean monitoring instruments that provides real-time, publicly available data for fishery management, coastal communities, and fishermen across the nation.
The Saving the OOI Act is a simple two-page bill that says no federal funds shall be used to decommission the OOI system until the NSF conducts a thorough review and assessment of the network with robust stakeholder engagement. The...