The U.S. National Science Foundation should move ahead with plans and funding for its Ocean Observatories Initiative, a committee of the U.S. National Research Council recommended in a 21 July report. The committee chair and the NSF program director of ocean technologies and interdisciplinary coordination said the report amounts to an endorsement of the initiative.The Ocean Observatories Initiative is envisioned as a program to help the U.S. ocean science research community make sustained, in‐situ observations and measurements in the oceans and on the sea floor. The research‐driven initiative is one of a number of national and international efforts to establish a global ocean observing system; these efforts also include a proposed U.S. Integrated and Sustained Ocean Observing System, an operational observing system.