Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Station is offline until further notice

The SRVI2 station as seen in 2011.


The CREWS station located near Salt River Bay in St. Croix, USVI, will be offline until further notice.  The station suffered severe damage to its structure and integrity on May 28th, 2014, when a newly-installed CTD exploded.  This incident is described in detail this blog post, with a summary of what is known about its causes in another blog post.  The station additionally (and perhaps unrelatedly) suffered a loss of communications on May 30th, whose possible causes are discussed in yet another blog post.

The first CREWS station at this site went live on June 15th, 2002.  This station was recovered to shore on June 20th, 2006 and redeployed (reusing the original underlying fiberglass structure but in a new design) on September 23rd, 2006.  This means that a CREWS station has collected data at this site for nearly twelve years, and for almost eight uninterrupted years in its current form.  This far exceeds the station's expected lifetime, which was estimated by some to be approximately five years.

The station is currently considered unsafe for climbing, and therefore irreparable.  Plans are being made for the removal of this station, and a second inoperative CREWS station in Puerto Rico (LPPR1), to take place possibly as early as late 2014 or early 2015.  It is possible that the station may eventually be replaced by a CREWS buoy similar to those that have recently been deployed in Belize, Tobago (BUTO1 and ARTO1), Little Cayman (CCMI2) and Barbados (DRBB1).

Further information on this station's removal and possible replacement will be posted on this blog as it becomes available.