The federal government’s new plans to dismantle a deep sea system worth hundreds of millions of dollars means weather forecasts, which any New Englander knows are already unpredictable, may become even more so.
As the scientific world reels from the loss of years of future data on the goings-ons of the ocean, two Menemsha fishermen joined an effort last week that could provide an alternative for at least part of the data that has evaporated as a result of deep cuts to the federal program and the literal disassembling of the infrastructure that supported it.
The disbanded network of more than 900 instruments at five arrays from around the world collected data for scientists to monitor and catalog the world’s oceans — from temperature to acidity to oxygen content to currents. It also allowed researchers for the past decade to freely study the public data to understand how the ocean absorbs greenhouse gases, acknowledge larger climate shifts, and make weather forecasts.
Jim Edson, principal investigator of the system called the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) and a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), made the announcement in a letter on May 22. He said that as the infrastructure is recovered over the next 15 months from each array — the Pioneer Array in the Mid-Atlantic Bight, two arrays off the West Coast, one in the Irminger Sea, and another in the Gulf of Alaska — “the associated real-time data streams and observing capabilities at those locations will come to an end.” The Pioneer Array, which previously sat 75 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard on the New England shelf, was moved to gather data from another region in 2024.
“Over more than a decade, OOI has delivered the world’s most advanced continuously operating ocean-observing systems, supporting science, engineering, education, and workforce development across the ocean sciences community,” Edson wrote. “We are profoundly grateful for the extraordinary efforts of the scientists, engineers, operators, educators, students, and partners who made this facility possible and who continue to advance its legacy through the use of its data.”
A spokesperson from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funded the project, said that the federal agency told WHOI on May 8 the plan “to adjust the scope” of the project.
It isn’t a cancellation, the spokesperson said. “All previously collected OOI data will remain accessible through the OOI Data Center. The decision to de-scope aligns with NSF’s wider strategy of a nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies.” The spokesperson said this decision was based in part on recommendations from a 2025 National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics report. A statement from the National Academies on June 9, however, said that its report was “inaccurately cited” and that “without ocean-observing assets such as OOI, we risk not having the data needed to address such crucial issues.”
“Sustained ocean observations are essential for understanding and predicting changes in our climate system. By continuously measuring ocean temperatures, currents, sea level, and atmospheric conditions, scientists can better forecast major events like severe weather, marine heat waves, tsunamis, El Niño and hurricane activity, providing communities, industries, and governments with critical time to prepare,” Suzanne Pelison, director of public relations at WHOI, said in an email to The Times. “These long-term observations not only improve weather and climate predictions but also help us track the health of the ocean and make informed decisions in a rapidly changing world.”
Meanwhile, on the Island, and although the effort can’t be a complete replacement of what was there before, two fishermen out of Menemsha, Matt Mayhew and Nick Wilbur, joined a 30-year-old program that uses their consistent and frequent trips out to sea to collect water temperatures at the bottom of the ocean, an otherwise scarce data set and one that was a part of OOI’s mission.
That program is called the Environmental Monitors on Lobster Traps and Large Trawlers, or eMOLT, and is administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service. It was started in 1995 by Jim Manning, an oceanographer at the center, who started to wonder whether fishermen, on their vessels, had the same questions he had, on a research cruise. While he was curious about bottom-water temperatures for science, fishermen, who would put thermometers in mason jars lodged in a trap, were interested for the sake of their haul. That was how the eMOLT program started, though, back in the day, Manning and fishermen would send temperature sensors back and forth via mail, and fishermen would maybe never actually see the data.
Now, the technology for this program is much more advanced and efficient. Duct tape and mail delivery are now Bluetooth and instant gratification.
From the outside, the sensor is unassuming, slightly larger than a hand. It’s hardly visible anyway, wedged inside a PVC pipe and strapped to the inside of the trawl door on Matt Mayhew’s 51-foot vessel. It really just looks like a miscellaneous or superfluous object on an already crowded boat covered in brightly colored nets, rusted sheets of metal, pulleys and wires, orange buoys, and so much rope. But that sensor, part of the largest collaborative program in the world between fishermen and science, is able to catalog data on one of the mysteries of the sea.
Mayhew and Wilbur are now part of a cohort of more than 100 vessels that help gather data directly from the source. The bottom-water data they collect, from the sensor on Mayhew’s trawl door and one in Wilbur’s trap, comes at no cost to them. The data is used to inform two types of models, hindcast and forecast. A hindcast model is used in stock assessments. Assessors can look at bottom-water temperatures however many years ago and judge how they influence biological rates, like the survival of juvenile lobster or sea bass. The data also informs forecast models, much the same as done on land, for subsurface temperatures. Not only can the data inform scientists and fishermen, when and where they may haul, but the Coast Guard also sets up search patterns based on the movement of cold and hot water masses.
The opportunity to join the program came to Shelley Edmundson, executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Preservation Trust, through Chris McGuire, the ocean program director for the Nature Conservancy in Massachusetts.
“We’re so accustomed to the world on land,” McGuire said, where information comes from remote sensing, satellites, and observations. “You go online, and you want to know what the temperature is somewhere, and there are 100 people on the Vineyard who are broadcasting the temperature at their house to some weather website.” That obviously doesn’t exist in the ocean.
The program provides valuable information to the fishermen, who can use the data to more efficiently catch fish, as well as “this incredibly valuable and super-expensive piece of data to researchers across the research spectrum,” McGuire said. He called this a “kind of magic” and a “total Goldilocks scenario.”
Manning’s successor, George Maynard, a marine resources management specialist at NOAA, said the program is in a period of rapid growth and won’t be hampered by federal cuts seen in other research projects because, though run through NOAA, the program is actually funded by other groups. Most recently, the Nature Conservancy through McGuire raised enough money to spend on the technology for 50 boats, two of which are Mayhew’s and Wilbur’s vessels. There were 145 vessels from mostly New England in the program last year, and Maynard said this year, they’ll probably be closer to 200.
The program’s main partner is the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation, and last Friday, executive director Erin Pelletier and lead technician Huanxin Xu from the nonprofit were down at the Menemsha docks. They got on an early boat and were picked up by Edmundson around 9 am to install the sensors on the boats.
The sensors are put in a fisherman’s gear, like a lobster pot, trawl door, or dredge, and when that gear goes in the water, the sensor takes a profile and collects temperature on the way down, then on the bottom, and back on the way up to the surface. At the surface, the sensor talks via Bluetooth to a little computer called a data hub (manufactured by Lowell Instruments) in the wheelhouse, which downloads data on coordinates, depth, and average temperature. It’s on the screen for fishermen, and once they get back into cell phone range, a SIM card in the computer pushes the data back to the eMOLT program researchers. The computers can even show the fishermen forecasted bottom temperatures for the next 72 hours. It’s a “two-way street,” Maynard said.
Mayhew of the Lady M catches squid, fluke, scup, and sea bass in the Nantucket Sound through May, and now, he’ll transition to mostly fluke in the summer months. He takes three-day trips every week and brings back local seafood to sell to the Martha’s Vineyard Seafood Collaborative, right on the Menemsha docks, and other off-Island vendors.
He wanted to be a part of the program because not only is the data useful for science but also for him and his hauls. Mayhew said the surface temperature doesn’t really depict what’s going on down at the bottom.
Wilbur agreed. He said he’s even shifted his operations 40 miles to chase colder bottom temperature to haul sea bass. “There’s a big disconnect,” he said between surface and bottom temperature; he even has a surface sensor. Wilbur’s boat was in Chilmark at the Sandpit, an area used by some fishermen to work on their boats, when Pelletier and Xu came to install his new technology. The Little Feat stood up on jack stands and keel blocks in the sandy bowl that baked in the sun on the 80-degree day. Jonathan Mayhew, Matt’s father, was also there to work on his vessel, the Skille. Wilbur’s hope was to get his boat out this week and start to use the sensor.
This program “is one of one of a handful of these kinds of programs around the world that empowers fishermen with their own sensors to collect these types of data,” Maynard said, but this technology won’t ever be a replacement for traditional oceanography, like the OOI program, he said. Fishermen may go back to an area again and again, but there’s a handful of sites where repeated measurements and observed trends aren’t possible through this program. The eMOLT program is good for a broad geographic coverage of data, but the OOI program collected numbers at fixed points over time.
“The impacts extend beyond WHOI. OOI has been a major customer and testing ground for the U.S. ocean instrumentation community. The descoping will likely reduce revenue for many small ocean technology companies and eliminate an important environment where engineers, scientists, and vendors worked together to improve instrument reliability, calibration methods, and new observing technologies,” Pelisson wrote to The Times. “The loss will be felt across both the ocean science and ocean technology communities.”
“At least we’ll have two data points,” Edmundson said down at the docks Friday. The hope is for more Island fishermen to eventually be involved, though there’s a waitlist for the program currently.
“All the fishermen I’ve talked to want to take part in it. They want the data,” she said.