Lookout Shoals Research Buoy Instrumented and Ready for Testing

Click picture for full size image (photo by Bill Brown)

The buoy has all the meteorological instruments mounted and cabled and is shown with an inductive modem and solar panels. The radiometers and satellite antenna are protected under a cardboard box before testing; under the other box is a hazard light. Behind one of the anemometer staffs are the temperature and humidty sensor and Gill port. Off camera is a is a clamshell cabinet containing the instrumentation computer.

The buoy is a collaboration between Dr. Rick Luettich of UNC IMS and Dr. Harvey Seim of UNC MASC. The telemetry system of the buoy employs both Iridium technology developed at UNC MASC and cellular technology developed at UNC IMS to create fail-safe communications.

Beside the surface meteorological package, the buoy uses an inductive modem to monitor two subsurface CTD (conductivity/temperature/depth pressure) instruments for deriving salinity and density in the water column and an acoustic modem to monitor an ADCP (acoustic Doppler current profiler) and third CTD on the ocean bottom. The ocean bottom package is retrievable via a pop-up buoy.

(illustration courtesy of Rick Luettich)

A positional buoy has already been deployed at Cape Lookout to test the deployment technique and mooring system as well as put the location of the research buoy moorings on nautical charts. The reseach buoy will be swapped with the positional buoy after testing of the research package. "If all goes well, we are hoping to deploy the fully instrumented buoy in the February to March time frame," remarked Dr. Luettich.

The buoy packages were constructed by Bill Brown at UNC MASC and Adrian Whichard, Stacy Davis, Joe Purifoy and Claude Lewis at UNC IMS. Tony Whipple at UNC IMS and Sara Haines, Luke Stearns, Collin McKinney, and Chris Calloway at UNC MASC engineered the buoy instrumentation subsystems. SEACOOS thanks the U.S. Coast Guard for their assistance in locating and deploying the buoy.