Field Experience

PICO buoy and anchor on a pallet ready for deployment

Prototype PICO systems have been deployed six times in deep water and three of the six have experienced a mooring line failure. Two of these were associated with problems in the terminations at the buoy and one was cut at 550 meters depth, which was below the Kevlar jacket and is presumed to be a shark bite. Each of these has received extensive post recovery forensic inspection and analysis.

PICO mooring lines have been tested in baited shark tanks to validate the fish bite protection concept. In an effort to keep the costs down, we terminated the jacket on the first lines at 500 meters when the line was made, and then deployed the buoy in an area known for deep shark bites in the temperate waters of the Pacific.

The two lines that failed near the buoy show the importance of investing more heavily in the design for this region of high bending and cyclic loading. An intense effort to simulate the bending and cyclic load on the termination is underway in the shop and new findings are encouraging.

Significantly one buoy was recently deployed from the NOAA Ship HI'IALAKAI with no PMEL people on board. The ship personnel had no deep water mooring experience and the vessel is not well equipped for mooring operation. The vessel was simply slowed and the palletized PICO buoy system was tipped off the stern and successfully deployed in 4700 meters of water south of Oahu. The whole operation took less than 10 minutes and occurred in the dark of the night. The buoy was lightly instrumented and all systems reported properly through the Iridium telemetry.