Russian Ship Under Indian Charter Rescues Errant NOAA Mooring

The Russian research vessel Akademic Boris Petrov, under charter with the Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), recovered a drifting National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) climate mooring in an emergency operation on September 12. The mooring was deployed in the Indian Ocean in mid-August along with 14 other moorings from the Indian research vessel Sagar Nidhi as part of a cooperative program between NOAA and MoES to develop the Research Moored Array for African-Asian-Australian Monsoon Analysis and Prediction (RAMA). For as of yet unknown reasons, the moored buoy began to drift from its anchor location at 4°S, 80.5°E shortly after deployment.

NOAA and MoES scientists were conferring in Delhi on science and technology issues related to RAMA when NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) in Seattle, Washington alerted them that the mooring was adrift. PMEL supplies moored buoys for RAMA as part of a new Memorandum of Understanding between NOAA and MoES signed in April 2008 for “Cooperation in Earth Observations and Earth Sciences.” Satellite positioning pinpointed the movements of the surface buoy which coincidentally was in the vicinity of the Boris Petrov. MoES dispatched the ship, which was conducting geological survey work in the region, to track down the buoy. MoES relayed to the ship instructions provided by PMEL on procedures for safely conducting moored buoy recovery operations. The ship spotted the buoy at dusk on September 11 and hove to wait for sunrise.

Mooring recovery began on the morning of September 12 and operations proceeded without a hitch. The Boris Petrov recovered the buoy, all sensors, and the mooring line. The recovered line will allow for a postmortem to determine why the mooring went adrift. More importantly, thanks to the quick action of MoES and NOAA scientists a half a world apart, and to the expert crew of Boris Petrov in the remote reaches of the Indian Ocean, the mooring equipment will live to see another day as part of RAMA.

October 2008