Mariners around Kodiak and across coastal Alaska rely on weather data coming from marine buoys to stay safe out on the water. These buoys provide information about water currents, wave height, wind speed and more. Amid shakeups in federal agencies, how that data reaches regular Alaskans could be changing.
Keith Cochran of the Bay Islander checks the marine weather forecast daily before he heads out to fish.
“The forecasting has gotten so good and detailed, precise; I mean it’s a matter of leaving the dock two hours later or four hours later, or slowing the boat down so I get out there at the opportune time," Cochran explained.
Cochran, who fishes out of Kodiak and Oregon, is currently fishing for pollock. It’s the ubiquitous white fish’s “A” season in the Gulf of Alaska and is the largest fishery in Kodiak by volume.
Cochran scrolls through weather data on his smartphone or on his Timezero navigation system on his boat. That data is mainly being collected from a network of 3-meter buoys which is roughly 9 feet 10 inches, all over Alaska and North America.
There are 19 of these weather buoys in Alaska, plus eight coastal stations on land that record weather data and ocean observations every 10 minutes, 24/7. That data is averaged together over the course of an hour and then transmitted to a satellite that federal agencies pay for. The wider network has roughly 100 weather buoys and 39 tsunami stations across the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and international waters.
The satellite relays the data to the National Data Buoy Center, on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, inside the Stennis Space Center. Only five of the center’s roughly 30 federal employees are responsible for monitoring and analyzing the data. Those staff members, with support from about 100 contractors, work in shifts 24 hours a day combing through the data to help forecast marine weather and monitor for tsunamis.
“So we’ve been here almost 50 years, operating a large number of weather buoys and we’ve expanded with time, certainly part of that expansion is with Alaska," William Burnett, director of the NDBC, said.
Some of the center’s staff members have quit as part of the Trump administration’s “fork in the road” offer, while others were fired amid sweeping cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration according to reporting from the Columbian, a newspaper in Washington state.
Burnett wouldn’t say how many. But, he said the remaining staff will be able to maintain the nation’s weather buoys and deliver marine data.
“From the technicians, the engineers who are designing the buoys, to meteorologists and oceanographers who are analyzing the data and quality controlling it," he said. "It’s a 24/7 network so they are always looking at the data.”
After that, it’s sent to the National Weather Service’s global telecommunications system and distributed in real time through smartphone apps, webpages and NOAA weather radio for anyone, including Cochran, to access for free. The agency’s data online gets 9 million hits a day according to Burnett.
Cochran said he’s starting to see more and more for-profit marine weather products with subscription models and fees. For example, he pays $10 a month in the summer for a service that helps him fish more efficiently.
“When you get into sea surface temperature, chlorophyll, temperature at different areas in the water column…those things we would call premium weather options, or they do call them that, and they charge a lot more for them," Cochran said. "Because those are things that you use to try to go figure out where your fish is going to be, or where they’re moving or where they’re migrating.”
There’s growing interest from private companies to sell their own marine weather products. The conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 argues that many of NOAA’s functions should be privatized instead of carried out by the government.
Burnett, with the National Data Buoy Center, said it’s not necessarily competitive. He sees opportunities to partner with private companies.
“The National Data Buoy Center and the National Weather Service operate what we consider to be that backbone, the foundational network, that people can always rely upon to go get observations," he said. "But our collaboration with industry partners and the commercial sector will allow us to grow in areas where we may not be able to place observations and they may be able to collect additional data for us.”
As an example, relying on more than just moored buoys and also growing “uncrewed options” like saildrones. But Burnett rejected the idea that these saildrones or other uncrewed options would replace moored buoys; instead he wrote in a 2022 opinion piece that the systems could work together to address observation gaps.
But Rick Thoman, a former forecaster who worked for the National Weather Service in Alaska for more than 30 years, is skeptical of going to private companies for weather data; especially about service to rural Alaska.
“Operating in rural Alaska is extremely difficult logistically and private companies, venture capitalist funded companies, by definition are in the business to make money. And that’s going to be a tough lift in rural Alaska. Could it be done? I guess we’ll find out," said Thoman, who is now a climatologist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy.
In the meantime, Burnett said the center will keep its network of weather buoys – each worth up to $250,000 – maintained and operational.
The maintenance window for the roughly 100 buoys across North America, including those in Alaska, begins this month and ends in November.
Burnett said the center will repair as many buoys as possible in that time frame, and this spring they plan to repair buoys around Kodiak with help from the Coast Guard.
