Surface Buoy

The purpose of the surface buoy is to help track, find, and support the drifting recorder. For the Adrift survey, we used a high-flyer style of pole buoy with satellite trackers mounted on the pole and the array is suspended below. A robust spar buoy developed at PIFSC was implemented as part of the CALCURCEAS survey in 2024.

Pole Buoy

The purpose of the pole buoy is to help track, find, and support the drifting recorder. The pole buoy consists of;

  1. Aluminum Pole: 9’ length, 1.25” 6063 aluminum round tube
  2. Lead Weight: approximately 17 lbs, attached to the bottom of the pole to keep buoy vertical
  3. Crab Floats: to keep pole buoy floating, with bolts above and below it to keep it from sliding along the pole
  4. Bridle: 12 strand line that links the pole buoy to the rest of the drifting recorder setup and arrray
  5. Radar reflector: so ships can see the pole buoy
  6. GPS mount: to hold the solar GPS and strobe light

Diagram of High Flyer Pole Buoy

LINK TO Hardware-PoleBuoy-Build page (open in new tab)

PIFSC Buoy

Basic Blurb & Pic of PIFSC buoys, then link to build (Hardware-PIFSCbuoy-Build.qmd)

Alternative Surface Buoys

Basic Blurb & pic(s), then link to Alt- Buoy Builds (Hardware-AltBuoy-Build.qmd)