NOAA Staff Have Been Busy Installing Mooring Buoys for Public Use Across America
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Mooring buoys are a vital part of the infrastructure in many national marine sanctuaries. These buoys make it safer and easier for boaters, divers, paddlers, and snorkelers to access sanctuary sites—while protecting sensitive resources like coral reefs, seagrass beds, and historic shipwrecks from anchor damage. Across the sanctuary system, NOAA staff and partners deploy, maintain, and replace mooring buoys to help ensure safe and sustainable recreation.
Here’s a snapshot of recent work from some of the buoy teams across the country:
Offshore of Texas in Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, the team got started in February by deploying two mooring buoys at East Flower Garden Bank, as well as redeploying the sanctuary’s sofar buoy named ‘Bob’, which provides the public with near real-time data on wind and wave conditions. On May 21, staff and support divers from Moody Gardens headed out aboard the M/V Fling. Together, they deployed three mooring buoys along long-term monitoring sites at Stetson Bank—popular dive spots for recreational visitors. The team also exchanged a passive acoustic recorder (SoundTrap) and a temperature logger mounted to a submerged railroad wheel used for water quality instrumentation. On the second day, they inspected mooring buoys at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s artificial reef site, Kraken, as part of the sanctuary’s partnership with the Ships to Reefs program.
In Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, the team was busy on May 22 conducting buoy maintenance, such as attaching new downlines, at North Patch NE2, Dry Rocks NN2, Carysfort Reef C3, Carysfort South CS1, and The Elbow E8. According to Maritime Heritage Coordinator Brenda Altmeier, “Our dive on C3 was a special treat—a naturally occurring staghorn coral colony, which was so beautiful to see!” This small team maintains more than 800 buoys (mooring, boundary, spar, etc.) throughout 4,539 square miles of sanctuary waters.
read more at sanctuaries.noaa.gov.
