Counter-vandalism at NDBC

Vandalism of data buoys is a common and significant challenge across many buoy arrays. From accidental interference during fishing activities to deliberate desecration, data buoys endure a wide range of physical extremes from human activity, in addition to powerful environmental forces. In regions popular for commercial fishing, the impact of vandalism to oceanographic and meteorological data availability has been debilitating, with cases of newly deployed buoys having been lost within days — or even hours — following their deployment. Ocean observing programs cannot be effectively sustained with the level of attrition that has been wrought through vandalism. With the overwhelming majority of the buoy vandalism events perpetrated by fishing vessels, several Regional Fishery Management Organizations (RFMOs) have adopted similarly worded resolutions prohibiting fishing on, or near, data buoys. Violation of these resolutions can result in the offending fishing vessel being flagged for Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. Despite this protective measure, buoy vandalism continues to have a substantial impact on the availability of data from ocean observing programs. An act of buoy vandalism will often leave clues in the form of data signatures in telecommunicated messages, such as an unnatural or sudden shifts of buoy compass heading, unforeseen buoy movement, apparent and sudden water pressure excursions. To aid in monitoring suspected vandalism, the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) has contracted Automatic Identification System (AIS) services to locate proximal vessels AIS transmitters. In 2012, a purse seine fishing vessel with an Ecuador flag was found through AIS data to be collocated with a Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) mooring, originally located at 5°N 110°W, over a distance of 12 nautical miles from the anchor location. In this case, NDBC had evidence in the form of anomalous buoy data and suspect AIS data. As an added mitigation measure, NDBC developed and deployed the first generation of the BuoyCAM to detect, and put a face on, the illegal fishing activities decimating portions of the TAO buoy array. In 2013, 10 BuoyCAMs were deployed amongst newly serviced TAO stations. The combination of camera data, analysis of buoy data signatures, and AIS information has allowed NDBC to document several incidents of vandalism with indisputable evidence. The BuoyCAMs captured willful and deliberate actions by large commercial fishing vessels that are in blatant violation of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) resolution, C-11-03, prohibiting fishing on data buoys. In one such case, a Belize-flagged long-line fishing vessel was captured by a BuoyCAM moments before striking the TAO mooring at 5°N 110°W. This vessel incursion resulted in the catastrophic damage to the buoy super-structure, yielding a complete loss of station transmissions. Another case captured a Venezuela-flagged purse seine fishing vessel clearly tied off to the TAO mooring at 0° 95°W in the act of sling-shot fishing. The same, or identical, vessel was spotted the following day by a BuoyCAM at another nearby TAO station, located at 2°S 95°W, where it was seen to attach a suspected fish-aggregating device (FAD) directly to the hull of the data buoy.