discussion / Marine Conservation  / 14 March 2019

How difficult is it to build a buoy and constrain it in place?

Hi everyone. 

I'm very interested in marine science and conservation. Is there any information on how to build a buoy? Icing on top would be to constrain it in place as well, but if that's not possible, that can be worked around with GPS. 

Thanks.

Akiba




Hi Akiba,

Probably the biggest hurdle is regulatory in nature (c:

Assuming that's been overcome, anchoring becomes the issue.  As you can imagine that gets more expensive the deeper the water is.  The nature and purpose of the buoy has an effect on this: if the buoy has to remain absolutely dead nuts stationary then a 3-point mooring may be required (and it still will move around a bit).

An interesting possibility is to have a wind powered buoy to keep it stationary.  Basically you put a wind turbine on the buoy to drive a propeller in the water.  The harder the wind hits it, the harder it wants to claw its way upwind.  This is counter intuitive but it does work.  But it assumes the main cause of drift is wind.

As for the buoy proper, you can buy them off the shelf in various sizes, or build your own.

Thanks,

-harold

Thanks Harold! 

I think it doesn't need to be super stationary but perhaps anchored so it doesn't move too far off. Alternatively, I like your idea of the wind powered (or solar powered) propeller. 

Do you recommend any website that goes through how to make a DIY buoy? Something that would actually last in coastal waters for at least a year long deployment and can provide a path towards buoys that could be released into deep ocean?

Thanks :)

Akiba

Hi Akiba,

May I ask what the buoy would be used for?

There's really not much to a buoy physically, you could make it from a 44 gallon plastic drum, but there may be requirements to carry a particular topmark, or a radar reflector. or a flashing lamp with a particular flash sequence  At any rate the coastal authorities may require approval of the location and may have to include it in their charts.

I was part of a team that maintained a data buoy.  It may seem like a simple thing but it was a lot of work: corrosion, biofouling, guano covering the PV panels, damage due to collisions with apparently drunk and blind boat skippers... it required attention every 10 days on average.  Calmer and less trafficked temperate waters would have been better, but we don't get to dictate that.

It was that experience that convinced me the future lay in autonomous underwater robots.  Mine is here.

There are a few robots out there that can do year-long missions: the wave glider, slocum or similar glider, Argo float come to mind.  The Saildrone is a bit new to say how long it will last out there.  Of these the Argo float is the cheapest, USD10k I'm told.

Thanks,

-harold