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Coast Guard recovers weather buoy By Craig DeSilva For Saipan Tribune
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Posted on May 09 2000
HONOLULU, Hawaii (PIDP/CPIS) — The Coast Guard Cutter Kukui arrived at the Sand Island Coast Guard Base in Honolulu Saturday morning after recovering the NOAA Buoy 51002 in Pacific waters.
The buoy was reporting missing on April 24 by a fishing vessel.
A Coast Guard C-130 airplane located the floating buoy about 160 miles west-northwest of its chartered position.
The buoy was stationed 250 miles south of Honolulu before its anchor chain was severed.
Coast Guard public affairs officer, Lt. Greg Fondran, said it’s still not known how the buoy’s 3-mile long connection was lost. He said it will now be up to the National Buoy Data Center in Mississippi and the National Weather Service to determine the next step.
“It’s now sitting on the dock waiting to be refurbished,” Fondran said during an interview with Pacific Islands Report. “Eventually a new haul will have to be created to replace the buoy.”
“Hopefully a decision will be made before June, especially since hurricane season is coming up,” Fondran said.
Before retrieving the buoy, the Coast Guard Cutter Kukui completed a six-week international, multi-mission deployment to the South Pacific. Port calls were made in the Republic of Kiribati, Tonga, American Samoa and Samoa.
While in Pago Pago, Kukui crew members participated in the American Samoa Flag Day Centennial celebration. Kukui and its crew serviced navigational aids in Pago Pago Harbor and the territory’s outlying islands.
“We made our annual run to American Samoa to review buoys and do search and rescue operations,” Fondran said. “It was an opportunity to show and train our counterparts from Tonga, Fiji and Samoa about law enforcement, seamanship, navigation and engineering skills.”
Kukui also provided a law enforcement presence around the remote U.S. Exclusive Economic Zones (shoreline to 200 miles) surrounding Howland and Baker Islands.
The crew also delivered medical and educational supplies to Kiribati, Tonga, American Samoa, and Samoa in support of Project Handclasp, a U.S. Navy humanitarian program that supplies needed goods donated by corporations and private citizens for distribution in foreign countries.
