The final pieces of the National Science Foundation's Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) have fallen into place. Last week, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and Oregon State University joined the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Washington in receiving contracts to be the primary managers of what is hoped to be a 5-year, $331.5 million effort to establish coastal, regional, and global networks of anchored sensor buoys and underwater vehicles. The network will provide the first real-time measures of key parameters such as nutrient levels and currents. Current measurements are often taken once, not continuously, and in specific points throughout the ocean that may or may not be indicative of larger patterns in the sea. “We don't … really know what normal means,” says Holly Given of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions, which is running OOI. In addition to illuminating new trends in ocean conditions and wildlife, says James Bellingham of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California, the initiative “heralds the beginning of a push to better instrument the ocean's interior, which is an essential part of developing a better ability to observe and predict Earth's climate.”