NOAA grants are keeping ocean-observing buoys afloat

A buoy bobbing in the ocean off Capers Island is a dream on life support.

The dream is the Integrated Ocean Observing System, a web of offshore buoys and platforms taking readings on conditions such as sea temperature, waves, currents and salinity. It's a hands-on tool to manage everything from fish stocks to forecasting rip currents, storm surge or tsunamis.

The real-time computer network ideally would feed data to and from instruments around the country and around the world, right down to the boater in his boat. The groundbreaking concept eventually could make life easier for everyone who lives or works along any coast.

The buoy is one of six put in place off South Carolina in 2003. One by one, they have been shut down as money to maintain them dried up.

But two regional coastal observing systems operating hand in hand off the Carolinas have won nearly $2 million in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grants.

"It keeps us in the game and keeps us moving forward," said Richard DeVoe, South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium director, who oversees the Southeast Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association, one of the systems.

Part of $1.2 million won by the Carolinas Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction System, the other operator, will be used to put the Capers Island buoy back online, to improve a near-shore wave modeling program that forecasts conditions such as where high surf and rip currents are. It could eventually be used to help forecast conditions such as storm surge.

Part of nearly $800,000 won by DeVoe's system will go to enhance high frequency radar that tracks ocean circulation, essentially large-scale currents. The tracking makes search and rescue operations more accurate, shipping more cost- and time-efficient and fishing more exact.

Both grants also will go to data management, taking the information generated and creating products such as interactive Web pages that can be used by the rescue, shipping or fishing groups who need it. The grants also open a door for both systems to seek other money, such as $500,000 won by the Carolinas group that will go to developing the marine weather model.

Meanwhile, information from a larger network of 50 offshore stations in the two Carolinas has helped researchers put together programs such as marine weather modeling that has been adopted by the National Weather Service and has become the model for similar programs nationwide.

Oddly enough, the funding shortages have led to the two systems relying more on each other, prodding along the overall effort to integrate the networks. The Capers Island buoy, part of the Carolinas system, now moves to the Southeast system.

"The goal here is to do more by working together," said Lynn Leonard, the Carolinas system investigator.

Reach Bo Petersen at 745-5852 or bpetersen@ postandcourier.com.