End of the Road

To announce even more unfortunate news...It is the end of the road for the Bolles Surface Drifter. It was looking very hopeful with its eddying patterns, being the only buoy to make it that far south and surviving the turn around Cape Canaveral. Sadly, we received a phone call from a few fisherman who tried to helpfully collect the drifter as they were offshore in their boat. The drifter was still in the water, though the fishermen claim that she was close enough to the beach that she was going to wash ashore. They pulled the buoy in and collected the transmitter, and threw the bulk of the drifter back into the water. That being done, our 2016 drifter project has come to an end. Though the buoys did not travel very far past their launch site, I am incredibly proud of each one of them and the hardworking students that made this possible. They drifters followed their own patterns completely independent of the data from last year, and contributed to the NOAA database. It was an exciting journey to daily monitor their progress through the sea and I am proud to have been a part of it.