This station was installed on October 23rd, 2013. It is an anchored buoy located just offshore from the Little Cayman Research Centre (LCRC) and is owned and operated by the Central Caribbean Marine Institute (CCMI) in collaboration with the Coral Reef Early Warning System (CREWS). CREWS handles the data stream and ecoforecasting for this station, and operates out of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML).
This new buoy is located very close to (but not at the exact site of) the site of the original CREWS station in Little Cayman, which was a fixed pylon structure that was installed on July 22, 2009. This original station was destroyed due to wave and weather effects from Hurricane Sandy on October 26th, 2012. That station was known alternatively by the designations LCCI1 (Little Cayman, Cayman Islands the 1st) or LCIY2 (Little Cayman Island in the 'Y2' Geographic NDBC/NWS Region). For simplicity we are referring to this new buoy as CCMI2 (CCMI's 2nd), although the National Weather Service in the US will also be giving it an all-numeric buoy designation.
For more information about the original station, please visit its Maintenance Log at this location:
http://lcci1-log.blogspot.com/
The new buoy's exact coordinates are
N 19° 41' 56.9"
W 80° 03' 39.4"
Here are some photos from the buoy's installation (credit: Rob Hedges, LCRC Director of Operations):
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| 1-Assembly |
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| 2-Assembly |
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| 3-Crane |
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| 4-Sensors |
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| 5-Tow |
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| 6-Anchoring |
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| 7-Install |
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| 8-Complete |
Full-sized versions of these photos may be obtained by clicking the images above.
