Ocean Sensor

9 26 pjt 2025 dogebags?

https://www.starnewsonline.com/story/news/local/2025/04/29/could-doges-proposed-cuts-to-noaa-sink-weather-buoys-off-nc-sc/83119470007/

'People are going to get hurt': What proposed DOGE cuts could mean for NOAA's weather buoys

The CORMP program at UNCW manages nine buoys off coastal N.C. But the program could be forced to shut down due to potential funding cuts, impacting real-time weather and forecasting efforts.

Gareth McGrath

USA TODAY NETWORK

• Proposed budget cuts to NOAA could shut down a program operating 18 buoys that provide crucial real-time weather and ocean data off the coasts of North and South Carolina and Florida.
• Loss of the buoys could create a "blind spot" near the coast, impacting weather forecasting, search and rescue operations, and public safety, particularly during hurricanes.
• Critics warn the cuts would have disastrous consequences, while proponents cite the need to reduce spending and prioritize other areas.

Capt. Dave Tilley didn't mince his words about what might happen if the buoys off coastal North Carolina that provide real-time weather, ocean and climate data go dark due to President Trump's proposed budget cuts.

"I can look at a flag on the beach and tell what the weather is doing offshore because I've been doing this a long time," said the captain of the Carolina Beach-based Wild Rover III and operator of the saltwatercentral.com fishing website. "But let me tell you who can’t do that, the weekend fishing boys from Raleigh and Charlotte.

"Without those buoys people are going to get hurt, and that’s the bottom line, and there are a lot more of them than there are of me.”

Severe budget cuts proposed at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration as part of Trump's push to cull the federal workforce, led by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, could gut a lot of the country's weather data network that aids fishermen, provides data to develop future weather models, and helps forecast threats to beaches and coastal communities.

The Coastal Ocean Research and Monitoring Program run out of the University of North Carolina Wilmington would be one of the programs facing potential shutdown under a fiscal 2026 Trump administration budget proposal that cuts roughly $1.6 billion from NOAA. The agency's 2025 fiscal year budget was nearly $6.1 billion. The UNCW-run program operates 18 offshore buoys that provide real-time observations of marine weather and oceanographic conditions along the coasts of North and South Carolina and Florida's east coast.

"Passback eliminates functions of the Department that are misaligned with the President's agenda and the expressed will of the American people," states a budget passback memo laying out the proposed cuts to NOAA's budget. "This includes eliminating (the U.S. Economic Development Administration) and (the Minority Business Development Agency) as bureaus within the Department and significant reductions to education, grants, research, and climate-related programs within NOAA."

Project 2025, a way-forward policy document created by the conservative Heritage Foundation, is seen by many as the blueprint Trump and Musk are following to reshape and shrink the federal government. The document proposed deep cuts to NOAA, blaming the agency for promoting "climate alarmism" and called for much of its work to be privatized or dissolved − especially anything associated with climate change.

Creating a 'blind spot'

Dr. Lynn Leonard runs the UNCW buoy program, which receives about $420,000 in support from NOAA.

She said the program operates nine buoys off Southeastern North Carolina, running roughly from Camp Lejeune south to the state line, and two shore-based stations on Masonboro Island.

The program's website gets about 5,000 hits a month. But Leonard said data generated by the program − with some buoys having up to 10 different sensors on them − is downloaded nearly 100,000 times a month by a host of public and private parties. Users range from businesses like Tilley's fishing site to the National Weather Service for its surf and rip current forecasts, National Hurricane Center for tracking tropical weather systems, and the Coast Guard when it has to conduct rescue operations.

Leonard thinks the program has enough funding to stay operational until roughly May 2026, although winding down operations starting with the buoys north and south of Cape Canaveral in Florida could start later this year.

If the buoys go dark, Leonard said a lot of that real-time information will be hard, if not impossible to replace.

“The conditions in the near-shore will be lost, and we really don’t want to have that blind spot near the coast,” she said.

Officials at the National Weather Service's Wilmington office declined to say how the loss of the buoys and other data tools operated by the UNCW program would impact the office's forecasting work, referring all inquiries to NOAA public affairs in Washington.

"Per long-standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters, nor do we do speculative interviews," said NOAA spokesperson Alison Gillespie in a statement. "NOAA remains dedicated to its mission, providing timely information, research, and resources that serve the American public and ensure our nation’s environmental and economic resilience. We continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission."

'We need those buoys. It's that simple'

The American Meteorological Society warned in a statement that moving forward with the heavy cuts to NOAA’s budget would have “unknown − yet almost certainly disastrous − consequences for public safety and economic health.”

If Wilmington's near-shore buoys have to pulled out of the water, Tilley said fishermen and others will be left relying on a buoy 40 miles offshore run by the National Data Buoy Center near Frying Pan Shoals for the closest real-time marine weather conditions.\

"Do you know how much the ocean changes over 40 miles? A ton,” he said with a wry laugh.

Tilley said he and other concerned parties have already reached out to local elected officials to express their concerns about the proposed NOAA funding cuts.

"Accurate and real-time data from NOAA’s IOOS is critical to support North Carolina’s ability to better predict and prepare for hurricanes," said Daniel Keylin, a senior advisor to U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-NC, in a statement. "Senator Tillis was proud to support the more than $3 billion investment in NOAA through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Any potential funding changes need to first and foremost ensure there will not be any operational impacts on storm preparedness.”

Tilley said while there are obviously commercial interests like his that rely on the data generated by the buoys, the bigger issue is their importance to public safety.

Take an approaching hurricane or tropical storm, for example.

"Twenty miles this way or 20 miles that way can make all the difference, something we've learned the hard way here in Wilmington," Tilley said. "We need those buoys. It’s that simple. It’s a bad idea to let them go."

Reporter Gareth McGrath can be reached at GMcGrath@Gannett.com or @GarethMcGrathSN on X/Twitter. This story was produced with financial support from the Green South Foundation and the Prentice Foundation. The USA TODAY Network maintains full editorial control of the work.

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see ocean mining xo

Barron plans to seize the newfound opportunity. Days after the executive order, The Metals Company officially applied for approval from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to begin commercial-scale mining in international waters.

NOAA says it is "committed to an expeditious review" of the application, though an exact timeline is unclear, since the agency has never conducted such a review.

If and when The Metals Company receives approval, it will likely take at least a year to build out a full-scale mining system, according to the engineering firm Allseas.

Deep-sea nodules were first discovered more than a century ago. Now, Barron says The Metals Company is on the cusp of hauling them up from the seabed on a commercial scale: "I'm certain it will be while Trump is president." npr

White House Plan Calls for NOAA Research Programs ...}:

The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com › noaa-research-budget-cuts](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/climate/noaa-research-budget-cuts.html)

Apr 13, 2025 — ... the preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded.” . “It would take the U.S. back to the ...Read more

NO LNX

White House Plan Calls for NOAA Research Programs to Be Dismantled

A Trump administration budget proposal would essentially eliminate one of the world’s foremost Earth sciences research operations.

By Austyn Gaffney

Published April 11, 2025

Updated April 13, 2025

See more of our coverage in your search results.

Trump administration officials are recommending the elimination of the scientific research division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times and several people with knowledge of the situation.

The proposal from the Office of Management and Budget would abolish the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research office at NOAA, one of the world’s premiere Earth sciences research centers.

A budget allocation of just over $170 million, down from about $485 million in 2024, would hobble science as varied as early warning systems for natural disasters, science education for students in kindergarten through high school, and the study of the Arctic, where temperatures have increased nearly four times as fast as the rest of the planet over the past four decades.

“At this funding level, O.A.R. is eliminated as a line office,” the proposal states.

Programs that retained funding, including research into tornado warnings and ocean acidification, would be relocated to the National Weather Service and National Ocean Service offices.

The outline for the 2026 budget passback, which would need to be approved by Congress, suggests “significant reductions to education, grants, research, and climate-related programs within NOAA” and comes after the dismantling of other agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the United States Agency for International Development, and the removal of mentions of climate change from federal websites.

Under the proposal, the total budget for the Commerce Department would be nearly $7.7 billion, a reduction of more than $2.5 billion from 2025 levels. According to the document, the budget would refocus on activities more in line with the Trump administration’s agenda, including enforcing trade laws and collecting scientific observations like ocean and weather data to support forecasting.

“This Administration’s hostility toward research and rejection of climate science will have the consequence of eviscerating the weather forecasting capabilities that this plan claims to preserve,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, the senior Democrat on the House Sciences Committee, said in an emailed statement.

NOAA, which takes up more than half of the Commerce Department budget, would receive just over $4.4 billion, a reduction of $1.6 billion from 2025.

“It’s not surprising, but it’s very disturbing,” said Rick Spinrad, who led NOAA under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

That includes reducing the budget for the National Marine Fisheries Service by one-third. The office would be split from NOAA and moved to the Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Grants that fund species recovery and habitat conservation would be eliminated.

Funding for National Ocean Service, a branch of NOAA, would be cut in half. Programs like the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, an office within the ocean service that studies corals, pollution, and the effect of climate change and sea-level rise on coastal communities, would not be funded.

The National Centers for Environmental Information, which archives climate data, would lose a quarter of its funding.

The proposal would also alter NOAA’s satellite and space programs.

It would gut the Office of Space Commerce and relocate the Space Weather Prediction Center to the Department of Homeland Security. A program called the Traffic Coordination System for Space that was set to take over the monitoring of satellite traffic from the Department of Defense, a kind of traffic police for outer space, would also lose funding. The passback suggests having such work done by the private sector.

The satellite program that provides data for weather forecasting and modeling would also be downsized. The longstanding relationship that helps NOAA acquire satellites through NASA would also be terminated.

Dr. Spinrad said the likelihood that this budget, as proposed by the White House, would pass Congress was low. “I don’t think it will withstand congressional scrutiny.”

The passback is part of balancing the federal budget, according to the document, which includes “eliminating the federal government’s support of woke ideology.”

Project 2025, a document that has been used as a blueprint for an overhaul of the federal government under the Trump administration, included a goal to break up NOAA and downsize its research arm.

“It begs the question, is the Trump Administration intentionally breaking our weather forecasting capabilities as an excuse to carry out the dangerous Project 2025 proposal to privatize the Weather Service?” Ms. Lofgren said in a statement.

Project 2025, which was published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy research organization, called NOAA Research “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism” and said “the preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded.”

“It would take the U.S. back to the 1950s in technical and scientific skill,” said Craig McLean, chief scientist at NOAA under both the first Trump presidency and President Biden, of the proposed budget.

Alexandra McCandless, an OMB spokesperson, said “No final funding decisions have been made.”

The agency has until noon on April 15 to appeal the proposal. And it has until April 24 to submit plans for many of the overhauls the passback suggests, even before the proposal has been addressed by Congress.

On Thursday, probationary government employees who had been fired in February, and then reinstated by a judge, received an email from the Department of Commerce firing them again after the decision was reversed by a higher court. A so-called reduction in force plan could slash an additional 20 percent of its work force in the coming weeks.

Austyn Gaffney is a reporter covering climate and a member of the 2024-25 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.

A version of this article appears in print on April 13, 2025, Section A, Page 25 of the New York edition with the headline: Plan Calls for End to NOAA’s Research. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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[### White House outlines plan to gut NOAA, smother climate ...

E&E News by POLITICO

https://www.eenews.net › Articles](https://www.eenews.net/articles/white-house-outlines-plan-to-gut-noaa-smother-climate-research/)

Apr 11, 2025 — ... the “preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded.” The OMB document outlines a plan to break up NOAA's space weather ...Read more

MMA 4 26 PJT 2025

...National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

• From the budget: “The Budget terminates a variety of Green New Scam programs at NOAA." Office of Management and Budget, *Budget of the United States Government*, [4/3/26]

• From Project 2025: “The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories." Project 2025, *Mandate for Leadership*, [2023]

OMFG

MOJO

This story was originally published by theGuardian and is reproduced here as part of the*Climate Desk*collaboration.}:

The Trump administration is breaking up a research center praised as a “crown jewel” of climate research after accusing it of spreading “alarmism” about climate change.

Russell Vought, the director of the White House’s office and management budget, said the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, would be dismantled under the supervision of the National Science Foundation.

“This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” he wrote in a social media post. “A comprehensive review is underway & any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.”

The announcement was the latest in a series of climate-skeptic moves by the administration, which has vowed to eliminate what it calls “green new scam research activities.”

It drew fierce condemnation from climate experts, who said the Colorado center was renowned for advances in the study of weather patterns, including tropical cyclones.

Roger Pielke Jr, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute thinktank, told *USA Today*, which first reported the story, that the facility was “a crown jewel of the US scientific enterprise and deserves to be improved not shuttered.”

He added: “If the US is going to be a global leader in the atmospheric sciences, then it cannot afford to make petty and vindictive decisions based on the hot politics of climate change.”

The move was also criticized by Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis, who said it put “public safety at risk.”

“Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science,” he said. “NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”

The center employs approximately 830 staff and includes the Mesa Laboratory in Boulder, which Vought said would be shut. It also operates two aircraft for atmospheric research and manages a government-owned supercomputing facility in Wyoming.

The decision to dismantle it is consistent with Donald Trump’s frequent characterisations of climate change as a “con job” or a “hoax.”

The White House has accused the centre of following a “woke direction” and identified several projects that administration officials say are wasteful and frivolous, USA Today reported.

These include a Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences that seeks to “make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered,” as well as research into wind turbines, an innovation that Trump has repeatedly denounced.

The administration has already proposed a 30 percent cut to the funding of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, slashing spending on its climate, weather and ocean laboratories, which work to improve forecasting and better understand weather patterns.

'These deaths are on Trump's hands': Republicans ripped for assault on science

AN 7 25

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Bryton Shang | DOGE / NOAA | Citizen Analyst

Bryton Shang — NOAA Senior Advisor

PostedJune 24, 2026

UpdatedSeptember 16, 2026

ByCitizen Analyst

Role: Senior Advisor to the NOAA Administrator (focus on AI applications at NOAA), confirmed publicly April 2025; previously Founder/CEO/Executive Chairman of Aquabyte, an aquaculture AI startup.

Status: Active at NOAA as of mid-2025 reporting; cited in E&E News and Undercurrent News coverage of NOAA contract approval delays.

Basis for Inclusion

Subject classification: Public Official (senior advisor to a federal agency administrator).

Anchor met: Public Official acting in formal federal capacity.

Background

Shang graduated at the top of his engineering class at Princeton University (B.S.E.) and founded Aquabyte, an aquaculture technology company using computer vision and AI to monitor fish health, growth, and sustainability at fish farms. Aquabyte attracted institutional venture funding before Shang transitioned to government service.

DOGE Role

• Bureau of Reclamation publicity stunt (January 2025): While his federal background check was still pending, Shang accompanied DOGE operator Tyler Hassen to the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation in an effort to order release of Northern California reservoir water in response to the January 2025 Los Angeles-area wildfires — wildfires hundreds of miles from those reservoirs. The episode was widely characterized as a publicity stunt with no operational nexus between the reservoirs targeted and the fires.
• NOAA transition (April 2025): Named Senior Advisor to the NOAA Administrator after the Reclamation episode. NOAA officials were instructed to pitch contract renewal requests to Shang and another DOGE-affiliated official; Shang was involved in decisions about which NOAA contracts were approved or rejected.

Documented Actions

• Participated in the Reclamation reservoir-release stunt while still in pre-clearance status (Revolving Door Project; DOGE Track, 2025).
• Held contract-approval gating authority over NOAA contract renewals during the 2025 NOAA contracting paralysis (E&E News, 2025).

Real-World Impacts

Federal Employees

• NOAA workforce reductions and a documented backlog of unsigned contracts during the period of Shang’s contract-approval gating role (E&E News, 2025).

American Citizens (Public Services)

• NOAA-administered weather, climate, hurricane forecasting, and fisheries-management services all depend on the contractor pipeline routed through Shang’s approval authority.
• Decisions affecting Aquabyte’s sector of expertise (aquaculture / fisheries AI) raise the appearance of prior-industry alignment in regulatory and procurement decisions.

Vulnerable Populations

• Coastal residents dependent on NOAA hurricane warnings; aviation and marine industries; commercial and tribal fisheries dependent on NOAA stock assessments.

Privacy and Data Security

• NOAA-held research data and partner-agency data subject to DOGE-coordinated access during this period.

Other Documented Harms

• Public-safety communications concerns raised by climate and weather science community.
• The Reclamation reservoir-release demand contradicted the operational guidance of career water-management staff and was reported as politically rather than operationally motivated.

Conflicts of Interest

• Aquabyte founder/CEO history: Direct prior commercial position in an AI/aquaculture firm whose sector intersects NOAA Fisheries authority.

Investigative trail pointers (public records)

Education only — verify independently. Absence of hits is not proof.

Use public-records-research-specialist, corporate-intelligence-investigator, and public-corruption-ombudsman evidence tiers.

Sources

• Undercurrent News, “AI tech startup founder hired as senior NOAA advisor,” April 8, 2025
• SalmonBusiness, “Aquabyte founder Bryton Shang joins NOAA leadership,” 2025
• E&E News (POLITICO), “Backlog of unsigned contracts paralyzes NOAA,” 2025
• Revolving Door Project, “DOGE: From Meme to Government Erosion Machine,” 2025
• DOGE Track (Key Enablers), 2025
• NOAA leadership page (noaa.gov)

Factual correction requests: Contact factcheck@citizenanalyst.ai.

Cross-References

• DOGE — Department of Government Efficiency Policy Tracker

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