Two offshore buoys that went out of commission in the last year may be restored in the coming days and months, filling a gap in tidal and weather data critical to boaters, anglers, surfers and researchers. Meanwhile, two other local buoys that provide information to marine scientists are also down, highlighting the budgetary constraints they face.
Last January, a data buoy 15 miles off Bodega Bay that offers the only offshore wind data in the area went adrift after its ocean floor mooring failed. Just after Christmas, another buoy 25 miles west of Point Reyes broke free from its mooring and drifted away. Since then, those who rely on local weather and wave conditions have had no sources of real-time data on wave size, temperatures and wind, leaving them dependent on predictions.
“The Bodega buoy gave wind, sea height, period of swell and sea temp,” said veteran Bolinas fisherman Josh Churchman, who catches rock cod on Cordell Bank. “All of these put together help keep fishermen alive.”
Crossing the dangerous bar at the mouth of Tomales Bay, where boats can be battered by breaking waves, is a particular challenge. Tom Baty, an Inverness fisherman, said he checked the Bodega Bay buoy every morning before heading out. “It’s upsetting that they haven’t figured out a way to get it back in place,” he said.
Repairs are in sight, however. The Point Reyes buoy is administered by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which recovered the device using G.P.S. data just two days after its mooring failed in December. A crew with the United States Army Corps of Engineers will re-deploy the buoy this week, said Ross Timmerman, an analyst with the institution’s Coastal Data Information Program.
The Scripps Institution’s 67 buoys receive funding from the Army Corps of Engineers and the State of California, and the institution often works with independent contractors to complete repairs and maintenance.
The Bodega Bay buoy is administered by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency that has less flexibility to contract with local ships and crews. The agency depends primarily on Coast Guard cutters to repair its nearly 200 stations.
“Their buoys will go down and be down for what seems like a really long time,” Mr. Timmerman said.
NOAA spokeswoman Maureen O’Leary said the Bodega Bay buoy will remain out of service until May. While some buoys can be reinstalled with a repaired mooring, this one had to be replaced. Since NOAA first deployed it in 1983, the buoy has gone adrift twice. Ms. O’Leary said 10 to 20 of the agency’s buoys break loose annually, and the agency sends ships to service them during the spring and summer months.
“We’ll begin scheduled maintenance in March 2022 and will reach California coastal sites in May 2022,” Ms. O’Leary said.
Unfortunately for local fishermen, the Bodega Bay buoy is the more crucial one for safety. The device is well positioned to monitor the swell heading toward Tomales and Bodega Bays, and provides wind information, which the Point Reyes buoy does not.
“If I ever had a favorite buoy, it was the Bodega buoy,” Mr. Churchman said. “I think it saved my life a few times.”
Willy Vogler, who co-owns the Lawson’s Landing fishing resort and writes a local fishing blog, said the Bodega Bay buoy was a good predictor for offshore winds and the likelihood of waves breaking on the Tomales Bay bar.
“I miss my Bodega buoy. I was considering getting a 46013 tattoo if it would help bring it back,” he said, referencing its NOAA station number.
In the meantime, there are alternatives. NOAA provides weather and tidal predictions based on models, and many boaters use a forecasting site called Windy. But the nearest equivalent working buoys are at Point Arena and San Francisco, so the predictions around Tomales Bay and Cordell Bank aren’t based on real-time local input.
“They’ve been pretty good, but a guess is never as good as what is actually happening,” Mr. Vogler said.
Fishermen aren’t the only locals who miss the buoys. Many surfers know what to expect at Bolinas and Stinson Beach, but for the most serious surfers chasing the best waves on less sheltered beaches, the Point Reyes and Bodega Bay buoys were both essential. Offshore wind and swell information helps determine what kind of board to bring, what time of day to surf and whether to even go near the water, Inverness surfer Christian Anthony said.
“People who are really dialed into surfing use all the available data,” he said. “With no sense of numbers to tell you what you might expect when you get to the beach, it actually might be really dangerous.”
But the highest stakes are for boaters crossing the Tomales bar. “Surfers can still figure it out,” Mr. Anthony said. “We can look at the San Francisco buoy. It’s a bummer, but it’s not a big deal. Going over that bar, that’s where lives can be affected.”
Researchers at the University of California, Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory have spent the past 40 years depending on the Bodega Bay buoy for offshore wind data. That information is critical to their work on coastal upwelling, the wind-driven displacement of surface waters by cold, nutrient-rich waters from the depths. The buoy’s measurements were a vital index for upwelling and helped show that climate change was affecting the phenomenon.
“This area is the primary site for studying coastal upwelling in the world,” said John Largier, a resident professor of coastal oceanography at the lab. “Ten years from now, we’ll try to assess the upwelling data and there will be a big gap. So it’s a legacy issue.”
The lab maintains two other smaller data buoys, both also currently out of commission, and Dr. Largier said he was unsure when they’d be running again because of the lab’s shoestring budget. One of the buoys, at Bodega Head, takes no wind speed or wave data and was mostly used for scientific research before its mooring failed in 2020.
The lab’s Tomales Bay buoy, which has been down with connectivity issues for several months, measured wind speeds and was a helpful tool for bay boaters, windsurfers and kayakers.