Proposed NOAA Budget Cuts Could Affect Local Mariners
Also weather forecasting and climate change research
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Acadia Shops.
WASHINGTON, DC—Looking things up on your phone or computer throughout the day, for you, may be entertainment, news, money management, or keeping tabs on friends and loved ones. But many people, many of whom are from our local community, spend the most time on devices trying to ensure that they can get themselves, their passengers, or their cargo home safely after trying to earn a living.
Mariners depend on weather data gathering and forecasting apps to plan their day, whether it be where to fish, where to take the tourists, how best to approach a harbor, or if they should just not go out on any given day, every day, because it is too dangerous.
According to an April 11, 2025, online article in Science magazine, President Donald Trump’s “administration is seeking to end nearly all of the climate research conducted by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA).”
The article reports that a House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memo says that NOAA’s budget would be cut by $1.7 billion.
“The administration’s plan would ‘eliminate all funding for climate, weather, and ocean laboratories and cooperative institutes,’ says the document, which reflects discussions between NOAA and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) about the agency’s 2026 budget request,” according to the article.
These cuts would not only end climate research, according to the article, but “the proposal also seeks to cut the National Ocean Service in half, with ‘no funding for Integrated Ocean Observing System Regional Observations, Competitive Research, Coastal Zone Management Grants, National Coastal Resilience Fund, or the National Estuarine Research Reserve System.’”
One local mariner who wishes to remain anonymous said regarding the loss of IOOS/NERACOOS, “I am sure every Maine mariner whether they are a lobster fisherman, the Cat Ferry, US Coast Guard, local yachts, or our local passenger boat operators, probably check the buoys first thing when they get out of bed every morning if they are headed out on the water.”
Integrated Ocean Observing Systems
The NOAA website describes the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) as “our eyes on the ocean, coasts, and Great Lakes. We are an integrated network of people and technology gathering observing data and developing tracking and predictive tools to benefit the economy, the environment, and public safety at home, across the nation, and around the globe.”
The NOAA IOOS system is comprised of 11 regions. These regions utilize weather gathering technology that include buoys, satellites, remote vehicles, ships, and other data gathering devices to compile real time weather reports and forecasting models that individuals, communities, and entire nations depend on for everything from daily work scheduling to major storm and disaster preparedness. These data gathering instruments are both governmentally and privately owned.
The NOAA IOOS system is a major part of the international Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) comprising over half of the more than 8,000 monitoring devices that make up the GCOS. Over 70 countries cooperatively implemented the GCOS.
NERACOOS
The collaboration that serves our maritime region is called Northeastern Regional Association of Coastal Ocean Observing Systems (NERACOOS). It covers the area between the New York Bight and the Canadian Maritime Provinces.
According to its website, NERACOOS partners “with federal and state agencies, universities, the private sector, and other nonprofits to help maintain assets, collect data, create tools to view data, and research the marine ecosystem.”
NERACOOS then takes that data “and others’, combine it all in one place, and make it available through data products like the Mariners’ Dashboad and our ERDDAP server, which contains all of the data we have ever collected,” the website continues.
This data is used by everyone from surfers, to scientists, ships captains, search and rescue organizations, and fisherman to stay safe and efficient, forecast, research, and monitor, and continue to learn and educate about ever-changing weather and ocean conditions.
While IOOS is not solely funded by federal money, it is majorly funded by donors, Universities and research organizations. However, without the base of federal funding, this resource may all but disappear.
“They are very important for safety and planning the day's operation. Of course, the weather info is also used by weather forecasters for our daily weather updates and tracking long term weather data,” that same mariner said. “Not having this information would make my life much harder and a little bit less safe because there is no other way to tell how strong the wind is blowing offshore, how big the waves are and what is the period of the wave (the distance between wave tops).”
He continued, “Back in the old days before we had these buoys we would just have to head out and see how rough it was, sometimes at our peril. It often looks nice in Bar Harbor and the bay but offshore it is a very different story.”
Cover/title photo from NOAA website.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
All of the below links were sent in by a local mariner and we wish to thank him for his time and knowledge. The link descriptions are his.
The main NERACOOS interphase for boat people.
https://mariners.neracoos.org/
Probably the most important buoy for MDI boat people is the Eastern Maine Shelf buoy. It is about halfway between the Duck Islands and Mount Desert Rock.
https://mariners.neracoos.org/platform/I01
Other buoys important to us would be the Jonesport Buoy which is operated by NOAA.
https://mariners.neracoos.org/platform/44027
And weather data from Mount Desert Rock.
https://mariners.neracoos.org/platform/MDRM1
You can also access all the buoys from this site, this is a private companies site which is used for marketing, but NERACOOS shares all the information them freely.
https://www.maineharbors.com/weather/buoy.htm
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I check two websites every morning -- the Coastal Hancock County weather (https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?zoneid=MEZ029&FcstType=text&TextType=1) and then the Marine Zone Schoodic to Stonington (https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?zoneid=MEZ029&FcstType=text&TextType=1) both of these sites pinpoint the weather and the sea information for this area.... Not Bangor, not Portland, but for Hancock County and area. I count on the marine forecast when going out in a skiff, and the weather - especially in the winter since conditions can be so different along the coast to what it might be inland. The loss of these kinds of free information sites would be devastating. I don't want to have to pay for apps etc when my taxes are already funding programs that help the public. We should not have to pay more for this.