Marlin-Yug Ltd     marlin@marlin-yug.com
RU EN
Marlin-Yug Ltd
English version » News » 2016 » Observing the Southern ocean and beyond with an extremely long-lived drifting buoy

Back to News



Observing the Southern ocean and beyond with an extremely long-lived drifting buoy

One of the many buoys to have been deployed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology near Heard Island was a Marlin-Yug SVP-B buoy (WMO No. 56531, Argos PTT 67381) that was deployed on 2 December 2006 near 50S 74E. This particular buoy exhibited a different behaviour to that seen from other buoys deployed in the same region. Instead of continuing to track quickly eastward and pass to the south of Cape Horn, its trajectory changed soon after entering the Pacific Ocean and it began to track slightly towards the northeast. This track continued until its meteorological sensors failed after 954 days of operation on 12 July 2009 near 41S 103E, at which time the Bureau stopped the buoy reporting on the Global Telecommunication System (GTS).

The buoy continued to report its position through the Argos System well after the meteorological sensors failed. The trajectory plot shows the buoy eventually becoming caught in a westward current before becoming trapped in a central Pacific Ocean gyre. From deployment until it finally stopped transmitting 2 August 2014, the buoy was tracked for 2,800 days (nearly 8 years) through the Argos System.

G. Ball, S. Motyzhev, E. Lunev, A. Tolstosheev. Observing the Southern Ocean and beyond with an extremely long-lived drifting buoy. Argos Forum. – 2015. – № 80 – P. 6 – 7.