To prohibit the National Science Foundation from obligating or expending Federal funds to descope or decommission the Ocean Observatories Initiative instruments, and for other purposes.

This bill stops the National Science Foundation from using federal money to shut down or scale back certain ocean monitoring equipment, known as the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), until a full review of the program is completed. The OOI uses underwater instruments off the coasts of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina, and in the Irminger Sea to collect data about ocean conditions, including physical, chemical, geological, and biological information. Before any of these instruments can be removed or reduced, the National Science Foundation must conduct a thorough review with input from scientists and coastal communities, and it must keep all OOI operations running fully in the meantime, including in areas where instruments have already been taken out of the water.

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