Thousands of buoys are dropped in oceans every year but they only work for a couple of years, eventually ending up on beaches. Now a global data company in Tasmania has come up with a solution.
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00:00Buoys have many uses, as moorings, as markings for navigation, and for scientific research.
00:10By deploying a unit that can drift in the open ocean, you can track the currents and also get sea surface temperature.
00:18In fact, thousands of buoys are dropped in oceans every year, but they only last around two years when the battery dies.
00:26No, they're never retrieved, so they're thrown overboard and the cost of retrieval is too big.
00:31Most float on, eventually ending up in garbage patches or on beaches around the world.
00:38But one global data company based in southern Tasmania is trying to reduce this waste.
00:44Wood is a more sustainable material compared to fiberglass or plastic.
00:49And because it's never been retrieved, it's good to make something that's going to break down rather than break up.
00:55Searching for a local solution, they've partnered with the Wooden Boat Centre in southern Tasmania.
01:02The hardest thing was trying to come up with the angles that were required to make it work like an orange and create the ball structure.
01:08There's a lot of gluing. If you can imagine, there were 16 pieces to put together to make the ball.
01:14The bowls are then filled with electronics and fitted with an antenna, allowing them to connect to satellites and send data back to researchers.
01:23The five buoys will be sent off from a ship here in Hobart and dropped into the icy waters of Antarctica.
01:29The elements inside will still contribute to waste, but it's a small step in the right direction.
01:35So we're moving towards having as little plastic as possible in the buoys, definitely going to improve in future versions.
01:42Next, they're branching out to see how else wood could be used.
01:47The next version is going to be in the shape of an iceberg, which is kind of like a flat disc shape.
01:54And it's going to be deployed in the ice as it melts, and then it can track the melting ice as it moves in the ocean.
02:01Local Creations, tackling global problems.