A person in orange waterproof overalls, a white hard hat, and a life vest stands on a boat deck by the ocean, holding a coiled blue rope on top of a metal post. The sky is clear and sunny.

Buoy, Oh Buoy! A Drifter’s Unlikely Journey

Buoy, Oh Buoy! A Drifter’s Unlikely Journey

20 Jun, 2025
A person in orange waterproof overalls, a white hard hat, and a life vest stands on a boat deck by the ocean, holding a coiled blue rope on top of a metal post. The sky is clear and sunny.

When Tonya Prentice (TAS ’24) sailed on the NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow, her school, Tremont Consolidated School in Bass Harbor, ME, had been assigned two drifter buoys for Tonya to deploy, through the NOAA Adopt a Drifter Program. 

After roughly nine months at sea, one of those drifter buoys was spotted in the waters off Ocean City, MD, by an attendee at a nearby music festival, and reported on the NOAA TAS Facebook page. This is the first time in TAS history that a teacher’s drifter has washed up and been reported. 

A blue dome-shaped drifter labeled "Tremont Consolidated School" floats on water. The post includes data charts and a comment noting its sighting in Ocean City, Maryland, during Boardwalk Rock.

In case you’re not familiar with drifter buoys, a drifter, or drifting buoy, is a piece of scientific equipment that measures sea surface temperature, but most are also equipped to measure other variables. As the drifter moves around, guided by ocean currents, measurements of atmospheric pressure, winds, wave height, and salinity can be taken. This data is collected by sensors in the drifter and transmitted to overhead satellites. Tracking the location of drifters over time allows scientists to build a profile of ocean currents. You can read more about drifter buoys here.  

An illustration shows an ocean drifter system: a surface float with an antenna sends data via satellite, sensors below measure sea surface temperature, and a drogue/anchor stabilizes the buoy underwater. Source: NOAA.
Image Credit: NOAA

The NOAA Adopt a Drifter Program’s mission is to establish scientific partnerships between schools around the world and engage students in activities and communication about ocean science. While teachers who sail have participated in the Adopt a Drifter Program, you don’t need to be at sea. You can apply to the program here and participate with your school any time. 

To see where Tonya’s drifter buoys have traveled, click here.  

A map showing the eastern United States with a blue dot labeled "Dep. Location" and a red dot labeled "Current Location." A trajectory line connects the two points. Title: "Alumni 300534063033200 Trajectory: 16-Jun-2025.
Path the drifter travelled before it stopped transmitting data and ended up on a beach in Maryland
Map showing the Atlantic Ocean with a curving black trajectory line; a blue square marks the departure near the U.S. East Coast, and a red dot marks the current location farther east as of June 16, 2025.
Trajectory of remaining drifter buoy

In the history of the program, these are some of the teachers who have deployed drifter buoys:

Debra Brice (2003)

Nancy Lewis (2003)

Mary Cook (2004)

Joan Raybourn (2005)

Eric Heltzel ((2005)

Tamil Maldonado (2005)

Jim Jenkins (2005)

Brett Hoyt (2006)

Vince Rosato (2006)

Kim Pratt (2006)

Karolyn Braun (2006)

Karen Meyers (2006)

Alexa Carey (2006)

Amy Pearson (2007)

Jacob Tanenbaum (2008)

Rebecca Bell (2008)

Dave Grant (2008)

Robert Oddo (2009)

Bryan Hirschman (2009)

Richard Jones (2010)

Art Bangert (2010)

Kathy Shroeder (2010)

Stephen Bunker (2011)

Elizabeth Bullock (2011)

Sue Oltman (2012)

Wes Struble (2012)

Bhavna Rawal (2012)

Sue Cullumber (2013)

Frank Hubacz (2013)

Sue Zupko (2014)

Kimberly Gogan (2014)

DJ Kast (2015)

Sam Northern (2017)

Susan Dee (2018)

Tom Savage (2018)

Martha Loizeaux (2018)

Callie Harris (2019)

Nick Lee (2024)

Tonya Prentice (2024)

Image credits: NOAA Teacher at Sea, NOAA