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China’s new marine buoy says goodbye to classic Western design used since World War II

First-of-its-kind intelligent ocean-observation buoy with disc-shaped side anchor solves ‘tangling nightmare’ of traditional structures

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The platform has officially joined the Yellow Sea observation network. Photo: Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Chao Kongin Beijing
A giant orange disc recently settled into the waters off eastern China’s Shandong province, marking the deployment of what Chinese researchers describe as a first-of-its-kind intelligent ocean-observation buoy.

It abandons a mooring architecture that has dominated Western marine engineering since World War II.

Measuring six metres (19.7 feet) across, the platform has completed sea trials and officially joined the Yellow Sea observation network, enabling continuous, real-time monitoring across the entire water column, according to the Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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“The world’s first buoy system designed with a disc-shaped single-side anchor structure has broken through the traditional single-point mooring structure at the centre of disc-shaped buoys,” the institute wrote in a statement issued last month.

The deployment also carried symbolic significance. As the new intelligent buoy entered operation, technicians simultaneously recovered a much smaller three-metre buoy that had served at the same station for more than 16 years.

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The project represents a rare attempt to redesign a buoy configuration that has remained largely unchanged for nearly 80 years.

Traditional disc-shaped marine buoys – widely used in Western oceanographic systems since World War II – typically rely on a central single-point mooring structure.

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