Trump budget would cut ocean data and leave boaters, anglers and forecasters scrambling for info

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: ABC News/AP

May 18, 2025, 1:21 AM


Capt. Ed Enos makes his living as a harbor pilot in Hawaii, clambering aboard arriving ships in the predawn hours and guiding them into port. His world revolves around wind speeds, current strength and wave swells. When Enos is bobbing in dangerous waters in the dark, his cellphone is his lifeline: with a few taps he can access the Integrated Ocean Observing System and pull up the data needed to guide what are essentially floating warehouses safely to the dock.

But maybe not for much longer. President Donald Trump wants to eliminate all federal funding for the observing system's regional operations. Scientists say the cuts could mean the end of efforts to gather real-time data crucial to navigating treacherous harbors, plotting tsunami escape routes and predicting hurricane intensity.

“It’s the last thing you should be shutting down,” Enos said. “There’s no money wasted. Right at a time when we should be getting more money to do more work to benefit the public, they want to turn things off. That’s the wrong strategy at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.” The IOOS system launched about 20 years ago. It's made up of 11 regional associations in multiple states and territories, including the Virgin Islands, Alaska, Hawaii, Washington state, Michigan, South Carolina and Southern California.

The regional groups are networks of university researchers, conservation groups, businesses and anyone else gathering or using maritime data. The associations are the Swiss army knife of oceanography, using buoys, submersible drones and radar installations to track water temperature, wind speed, atmospheric pressure, wave speeds, swell heights and current strength. The networks monitor the Great Lakes, U.S. coastlines, the Gulf of Mexico, which Trump renamed the Gulf of America, the Gulf of Alaska, the Caribbean and the South Pacific and upload member data to public websites in real time.

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/trump-budget-cut-ocean-data-leave-boaters-anglers-121919248

[erronis]

1. I'll bet his friends, the mega (maga?) yacht owners will get a private feed of information

Can't risk those multi-billion $ yachts or their owners, can we?

[highplainsdem]

2. The Trump regime does seem to be doing its best to cripple the US and make our government and individuals

more vulnerable, both to natural disasters (including disease) and attacks from foreign and domestic enemies.

And the journalists and lawmakers who get a chance to ask the important questions about this, but don't ask them, are letting us down.

Democrats - elected Democrats - should have a website keeping track of every single way Trump is endangering this country, with links to news stories every day, plus quotes from experts (including Republican experts) on exactly how Trump regime actions harm us.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. Democrats ARE actually tracking the funding freezes (with descriptions and status updates)

I had seen an article and posted about it but couldn't find it in a search here and forgot to save the links in my little links text file... BUT just found the reference (so have it saved now) -

DEMOCRATS TRACKING FUNDING BLOCKS (PRESS RELEASE) - NEW: 100 Days In, Trump is Blocking At Least $430 Billion Dollars in Funding Owed to American People

HOUSE VERSION (with embedded viewer) - https://democrats-appropriations.house.gov/100-days-trump-blocks-least-430-billion-dollars-funding-owed-american-people

SENATE VERSION (with embedded viewer) - https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/trumps-funding-freeze

[highplainsdem]

5. We need a site with more emphasis on the physical dangers Trump is creating, from lack of weather

and disease information to his undermining of national security and domestic crime fighting. He's setting the US up for a fall. And while that could be partly due to his stupidity and maybe a naive belief that individual states can pick up the slack as he cripples or redirects US agencies and departments, it's likely that no one is happier about the US being weakened than Putin. Trump is planning economic partnerships with Russia already. I wouldn't be surprised to see him start bringing in Russian experts in other areas. Unless he decides to favor other foreign patrons and be less loyal to Putin, and that doesn't seem very likely so far.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. The problem with sites like that

it becomes "data intensive" and results in a "tldr;" result and response to it.

We unfortunately saw that when the Harris/Walz campaign attempted different ways to warn about Project 2025 (which we are now seeing implemented in its full glory).

It basically comes down to how they talk about having "too many lines on a Powerpoint presentation" (and you lose your audience). Some crave data-intensive presentations and others only want to see one page with a few lines that gets to the point.

This was oddly the original intent of Twitter when it first came out - to distill what you had to say down to 140 characters and that was it. It was obviously expanded later but it forced people to "get to the main idea", which was a rare gift indeed for those who could do it (the ultimate "sound bite" )!

And with respect to your example of "weather" - people in the state of AR under Huckleberry Hound Sanders are experiencing it first hand - the denial of disaster aid. Those red-state loons are hard heads and maybe eventually they will "break" (or I expect they may just slither away and disappear, never to be heard from or will vote, again). Similarly KY just got hit again with tornadoes. Will see if Spawn of Ron Paul and Turtle will "do something about it" or will just cave.

[highplainsdem]

8. A brief basic message with a link to a News page would work, with the News page including experts' comments.

Maybe with a few Latest News direct links on the main page.

Trump won in large part because he pounded away on a consistent messsage that "immigrants are a threat" bolstered by whatever the relevant news story or viral social media claim of the day was.

We need to use a similar line of attack against him.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. Unless and until WE BUY BIG MEDIA

we will never be able to "compete" on that front.

The "pounding" was done on most of the M$M through their gasbag talking heads and through social media, where you have many on DU who refuse to look at any social media at all.

[highplainsdem]

11. We don't own big media and can't wait till we do to reframe the arguments. And Trump used social media

and podcasting to great effect.

you have many on DU who refuse to look at any social media at all

I'm not talking about preaching to DUers. I'm talking about getting a consistent message out to a wider audience.

[BumRushDaShow]

12. You still need a "microphone"

and that "microphone", let alone a MASSIVE amplifier for it, is something we DON'T have.

"Reframing" arguments is irrelevant when the media ignores the press releases from our side and none of them will show up at our press conferences (CSPAN shows some of them and "local media" may show up at events where we may be having town halls, etc).

We also have some of "us" who fall into the trap of accepting their framing but then do that because they find that this is the only way they are given air-time.

Last year, Soros Fund Management bought (and was approved for) majority ownership of Audacy, an entity that owns several hundred radio stations (many of them big name in the largest broadcast markets), as well as owning a whole internet platform of streaming programs, podcasts, etc.

What needs to happen is to set aside a specific set of "syndicated programming" for 24/7 running of selected "messengers", and like the Salem loons did with their stations, run OUR programming on those stations.

THAT is how you get "messaging" out there. You need "infrastructure" for it and we now have SOME infrastructure to start with.

(and ETA - when you have almost EVERY GOP Congressional loon going apeshit over approval of that Audacy purchase, you KNOW you have hit the bullseye )

[IronLionZion]

3. Weaken America to make it great again

kind of like destroying a village in order to save it.

[Martin68]

7. I couldn't care less about anglers. I have nothing against fishing for pleasure or sport, but their convenience is a

very, very low priority compared to national security and disaster prevention and recovery.

[KPN]

10. Yep. Those other things are side benefits. I surf and benefit from NOAA and National Marine Fisheries Service

ocean observations. By looking at buoy reports, I know whether, when and where waves will be worth the 10-40 minute one-way drive to my different local surfspots. In the past, this info was broadcast via shortwave radio broadcasts by NOAA. Today, they are digitized. Numerous private websites/platforms use the info to put it into user-friendly interfaces that surfers, sailors, windsurfers/kite boarders, fishermen, divers and other non-commercial users to make decisions from.

It's good stuff. Invaluable to me and saves me a lot of wasted time and fuel emissions.