Hurricane Buoy Deployment 5 of 5

Within 100 m of the deployment station the anchor is released. Not without a dramatic countdown. Spend an entire weekend working and preparing for a safe buoy deployment and see if you don't get excited about this.

If you watch carefully you can see the line of yellow floating glass balls disappear into the dark sea as the anchor drags them down.

When the buoy is retrieved in 2 months, a transducer will send acoustic pulses to the acoustic release at the bottom (3000+ m deep!) and signal it to let go of the anchor. There are actually two acoustic release connected to a single chain so that if one fails, there is a backup. Redundancy is a key feature of all successful systems at sea as there's no land around and being at sea is very expensive.

Once released the line will float to the top under the positive buoyancy of the glass balls and will be easy to spot.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• hurricane
• buoy
• deployment