According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, a drifting buoy was recently recovered by a fish harvester south of the St. Jacques Island, in Newfoundland and Labrador– turns out, it’s been drifting through the ocean for 64 years!
It was determined that the drifter was released on October 3, 1960 in the Bay of Fundy, and has been travelling the ocean ever since!
We have a long history with the drifter program in the Maritimes Region, which began at the St. Andrews Biological Station in the 1920s.
We’ve deployed a number of modern surface drifters to support the Ocean Protection Plan and Marine Conservation Target programs to advance our understanding of ocean circulation in the coastal areas of Atlantic Canada, and to help study marine connectivity between marine conservation areas.
We can’t wait to see what discoveries this state-of-the-art technology will provide next.