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Budget Cuts Blunting Usefulness Of Buoy Weather System

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By LINDSAY PETERSON

lpeterson@tampatrib.com

Published: March 4, 2009

ST. PETERSBURG - Funding cuts are jeopardizing a buoy system in the Gulf of Mexico that measures wind, waves and currents, crucial information in the kind of search and rescue efforts necessary this week with the disappearance of four football players in the Gulf.

The data is also used by boaters trying to assess weather conditions and researchers studying red tide.

"It provides information for people going out fishing … It provides long-term climate information," said Jyotika Virmani, executive director of the nonprofit Florida Coastal Ocean Observation System Consortium, based in St. Petersburg.

But the data system will fray over the next year as the University of South Florida removes more than half of the 12 buoys, she said. USF has maintained the buoys from its St. Petersburg campus, but can't do it anymore with the loss of about $1 million in federal money for the observation system.

Money for the program comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, but since 2006 funding cuts have caused several ocean observation agencies to pull out their buoys.

The 12 buoys in Florida now stretch from the coastal waters off Pasco County to the waters west of Key West, but three will come out next week and four will come out over the next 12 months.

USF oceanography professor Robert Weisberg started the Florida coastal observing system in 1993, the same year NOAA installed its first buoy in the Gulf, in the waters west of the Suwannee River.

The buoys collect information from both above and below the water surface. The public uses the real-time wind, air temperature and pressure data, Virmani said. It's posted at http://comps1.marine.usf.edu/C10/index.shtml.

Researchers use the data on the water's movements, salinity and varying temperatures to model changes over time. In addition to tracking climate change, they're working on a method to forecast red tide outbreaks, Virmani said.

Coast Guard search-and-rescue teams use a computer system that draws information from these and other weather buoys in the gulf, said spokesman Barry Bena. He couldn't confirm whether the USF buoys were used in the search for the lost football players this week.

The USF buoys are crucial for the USF researchers studying red tide and climate change. Satellites still will be able to provide information about wind and air conditions at the water's surface, Virmani said, but to build long-term models, you need to know what's going on underneath as well.

"It's all connected. What happens underneath affects what happened on top and visa versa."

Reporter Lindsay Peterson can be reached at (813) 259-7834.

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