World’s first intelligent ocean-observation buoy features disc-shaped side anchor, solving ‘tangling nightmare’ of traditional structures
It abandons a mooring architecture that has dominated Western marine engineering since World War II.
“The world’s first buoy system designed with a disc-shaped single-side anchor structure has broken through the traditional single-point mooring structure at the centre of disc-shaped buoys,” the institute wrote in a statement issued last month.
The deployment also carried symbolic significance. As the new six-metre intelligent buoy entered operation, technicians simultaneously recovered a much smaller three-metre buoy that had served at the same station for more than 16 years.
The project represents a rare attempt to redesign a buoy configuration that has remained largely unchanged for nearly 80 years.
Traditional disc-shaped marine buoys – widely used in Western oceanographic systems since World War II – typically rely on a central single-point mooring structure.
Source: News - South China Morning Post
