Servicing Looe Bay Wave Buoy

In the south-west we have 13 wave buoys, Directional Wave Rider (DWR) MkIII, which are continually collecting wave data.  They are in quite shallow water, so close to the shore.  In order to ensure they are correctly working – data quality is very important for us! – they get a service every 6 months.  One of our team, Issie, recently had the exciting opportunity to join the service of Looe Bay wave buoy.

During a service the entire mooring system is carefully lifted out of the water and inspected for any cuts, abrasions or deformities. This includes heavy chains, rubber bungees, pellet floats, Dyneema ropes (the world’s strongest fibre) and a hefty anchor weight which, at ~500 kg, helps keep the buoy in place (Figure 1).

Figure 1. An example mooring schematic.

Once the buoy is located, it is hoisted out of the water and placed carefully onto a tyre on deck. The buoy is often heavily bio fouled, covered in seaweed, slime, and mussels (Figure 2). Once the old mooring has been checked and the appropriate sections have been switched out, a ‘new’ buoy is ready to be deployed into the sea!

Figure 2. To the left is the clean, ready-to-go buoy. On the right, a buoy that has been deployed for ~6 months, covered in seaweed (Looe Bay, Cornwall).

Figure 3. A ready to go, fully assembled F-POD device.

At this service, an additional device was added to the mooring. Chelonia supplied a F-POD which is a listening device that can detect the presence and activity of marine mammals from their echo-location clicks. This is part of the Cetacean Acoustic Trend Tracking Project (CATT), a research collaboration between Chelonia and Local Marine Conservation Groups, volunteers and Universities. The F-POD will remain on the seabed until the next scheduled service where the buoy mooring is lifted. The F-POD will be pulled out, along with the DWR buoy, the SD card can be removed and the data analysed.

To see all of our hydrodynamic data, in real-time, click the link to  our page here.