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January 18th, 2010 "Stealthy" ship hits the buoy During the fortnightly inspection and sampling cruise that we carried out this morning at the OOOS station, we found, with not much surprise, that the upper ring of the buoy's mast, was strongly bent (Photo 1) by a "stealthy" ship. The collision with the buoy not only bent the upper steel ring, but also fractured one of two the GSM antennas for data transmission and twisted the irradiance (PAR) sensor. We temporarily fixed the antenna's problem with some tape and a couple of flanges (Photo 2, 3). Hopefully the buoy will transmit data normally for two more weeks until we will take the buoy out of water to perform planned major maintenance. In the way to the sampling station, we also saw at least three dolphins (one of them in Photo 4) swimming around, two of them adults and one juvenile. We think that neither these dolphins nor any other natural event have been responsible for damaging the buoy's structure... the problem comes, for sure, from the same source (once more): irresponsible human beings not reporting the collision!
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