Each year about 300 drifting buoys are deployed in the ocean and used by the scientific community to monitor some parameters of the marine environment, such as sea surface temperature and currents, and track plastic marine debris. The use of these “silent sentinels” represents an indispensable tool for marine research and climate studies.
Nevertheless, their usage is growing concern on the impact that these technologies have on the environment at the end of their lifetime. After stopping transmitting useful data, in fact, drifting buoys, mainly composed by plastic, remain in the ocean or, are transported by the sea currents on the coastal shorelines, contributing themselves to the pollution risk of our oceans and harming marine life.
The “Future Ocean Observation Drifter” (FOOD) project, hosted by the EMSO Spanish Regional Facility, OBSEA, under the Physical Access Program, proposes environmentally friendly alternatives to traditional drifting buoys to solve this environmental issue.
Led by Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS), a prominent global company specializing in Earth observation and surveillance solutions, the FOOD project specifically focuses on substituting conventional plastic hulls with wooden hulls for drifting buoys, offering a promising approach to more sustainable ocean research. This innovative concept has been introduced by Dr. Marc Lucas, Senior Oceanographer and Project Manager at CLS and Principal Investigator of the FOOD project, and has garnered significant international interest from various institutions and companies.
“We are testing in real ocean conditions our innovative wooden buoy to validate the effectiveness that viable and robust alternatives to plastic observation systems exist, ensuring the same level of durability and high-quality data collection capabilities at sea”, explains Lucas.
The CLS wooden drifting buoy has been deployed off the coast of Barcelona, Spain, in the EMSO site OBSEA for a six-month trial, during which it will be closely monitored by the company’s team, as explained by Philippe de Saint Leger, Head of Telemetry for Environment & Climate Services at CLS: “Throughout the deployment duration, we will perform a comprehensive monitoring of the buoy’s functionality to assess the performance of the telemetry system, GNSS receiver, and the battery functionality”.
Deployment of the wooden drifting buoy at the EMSO OBSEA regional facility
Concerning the analytical performance of the sensors integrated into the wooden buoy, Lucas adds: “We will conduct a comparative analysis of the sensor data regarding parameters such as temperature, salinity, and air pressure, which the wooden buoy is currently measuring at sea, against the reference time series data from the EMSO OBSEA mooring. This will help us assess how well our buoy behaves and how effectively it transmits data back to shore.”
Should the sea trials yield successful outcomes, de Saint Leger concludes: “We may consider incorporating wood as a reliable material for the casings of other innovative products beneficial for marine research, meteorology, and fisheries, thereby developing other sustainable devices.”

Map with GPS positions sent (left) and Battery Monitoring (right)

Hourly temperature measurement of the CSL’drifting buoy

Number of Messages per day received onboard Satellite (to be linked with sea state in formation from Obsea sensors such as wave parameters and wind)