NOAA Donates Buoy to Museum

By Kathy Knotts

Annapolis Maritime Museum is now the proud owner of an historic Chesapeake Bay buoy. 

Longtime museum partner, the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office, has donated a Chesapeake Bay Observing System (CBOS) buoy for installation at the museum’s Ellen O. Moyer Park campus.

This first generation NOAA buoy helped revolutionize near time data collection on the Bay. Today, Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy Systems (CBIBS) are more commonly used for real-time data collection, but CBOS paved the way to improving the Bay.

“These buoys are in multiple locations across the Bay” says museum curator Caitlin Swaim. “They use solar panels to power them and collect all sorts of water quality data, like clarity, wave action, wind speed and they even track sea nettle probability.”

NOAA is able to get real-time information from the CBIBS, including meteorological and oceanographic data, which is available to the public at buoybay.noaa.gov and via an app. The first CBIBS buoy was deployed in 2007.

Swaim says she is excited to have another piece of Bay history on display with the museum. “I really hope this brings people into our outdoor exhibit spaces to interact with the buoy and also think about water quality and how it matters and the role we all play in improving that.”

The park is open dawn to dusk: amaritime.org.