Washington DC - Facing opposition, including from Republican senators, President Donald Trump's administration is pausing its plans to dismantle a deep-sea monitoring system that has been used for a decade.

In a news release shared on Thursday, the National Science Foundation (NSF) said Thursday it "appreciates the concerns raised by the range of stakeholders that have informed us they rely on data" collected by the system, and said they "will not proceed with further removal or descoping of equipment from the remaining arrays."

For one set of devices situated on the Northwest coast that had already been removed, "we are developing plans to redeploy the equipment after servicing," the NSF said.

The news comes after reports published earlier this month revealed the administration had ordered the NSF to begin shutting down the Ocean Observatories Initiative – a $360 million system made of hundreds of devices used to monitor the effects of climate change on marine environments.

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In response, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill aimed at blocking the removal of the devices, with lawmakers across party lines calling the initiative wasteful and a threat to coastal communities.

"Thankfully, common sense has prevailed," Chris Robbins, associate director of science at Ocean Conservancy, said in a statement to AFP, describing the tools as "indispensable."

"The OOI system is second-to-none in the world and provides data that quite literally saves lives and livelihoods," Robbins said. "We simply could not afford to scrap this asset."