Backyard Buoys

Hello, we are Project Backyard Buoys. We aim to empower indigenous coastal communities with easily operated wave buoys that they steward, supported by ocean scientists. Indigenous coastal communities continue to explore, rely upon, and caretake the ocean, as these are their backyards for food and cultural practices, as they have since time immemorial. But climate change is threatening the safety of indigenous coastal communities' backyard.

[Taholah, at the mouth of the Quinault River] On a beautiful calm day, the Pacific Ocean out in front — the ocean has always provided. This also threatens, especially more recently with climate change: sea level rise, higher temperatures, greater storm ferocity, more frequent storms. An affordable wave buoy system would allow the opportunity to warn people of impending building storms that could breach the little sea wall out there. And that's why we would love to have a buoy system that augments what little we have out there already at the ocean. For weather buoys, there are few and far between, and we live in a very remote area here at the Quinault Indian Nation.

We are working together to make measurements on a scale that people need, at a cost people can afford — in the Pacific Islands, Pacific Northwest, and Alaska, expanding to other indigenous and underserved communities nationwide through U.S. IOOS and beyond. Our team brings together these partners with leaders of regional ocean observing systems and an ocean technology company. Together we each have a necessary piece of the pie.

This is the Spotter wave buoy. It's human-sized and really easy to handle, as you can see. It's orders of magnitude cheaper than traditional wave buoys, and easy to deploy from smaller boats. The wave data are connected to the federal ocean observing systems, with access to scientists, educators, and truly the world. We're also co-designing ways of accessing the data on the water where bandwidth is low and hands are often cold and wet — we're testing things like text alerts and simplified web apps.

The Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission was approached about the wave buoy project. What appealed to us about the project was that it has a collaborative approach and is community-led and community-driven. Our whaling communities are located along the Arctic coast of Alaska and rely on the resources from the sea to feed our communities. The sea can be very unforgiving and dangerous, and it changes all the time. This technology will allow us to improve safety for our hunters and better understand environmental changes here in Alaska.

A big revelation in the project was when we spoke to our captains and they kept asking us, "Where do you want to put the buoy?" Our answer was, "Where do you want to put the buoy? You tell us." That was a huge aha moment that really shifted their appreciation of the project and their connection to it. This project has the ability to bridge local indigenous knowledge and scientific data collection, making the information needed for ocean safety decisions more accessible and relevant to our local community.