Another setback for beleaguered Cape du Couedic wave buoy

South Australian fishers and surfers will have to wait about another month before its beleaguered Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) wave buoy is redeployed off Kangaroo Island. 

Despite BOM planning to reinstate the Cape du Couedic wave buoy last week after a "lightning strike" nearly four months ago put it out of commission, a new complication has caused further delays.

"Final pre-deployment checks identified an issue with the buoy's satellite communications, so deployment has been postponed while the issue is fixed," a BOM spokesperson said.

"To ensure reliability and longevity of the replacement buoy, the bureau has opted to install a new mooring as part of the redeployment rather than reuse the existing one."

A failure of the buoy's mooring system caused it to break free and wash up on Kangaroo Island in November 2025, putting it out of commission for six weeks.

That failure had followed a long, nine-month delay to repair the buoy from September 2024, after it started transmitting erroneous data and was recalled.

BOM blamed the delay on a supply issue to source a "specialist mooring" from Canada.

As a consequence, the buoy has only been operational for about 10 months in two years, and its ongoing issues are frustrating communities.

"We understand the value of the Cape du Couedic wave buoy observations to the coastal community," the BOM spokesperson said.

"The bureau is expecting new mooring components to arrive shortly and anticipates the wave buoy will be operational again by late October 2026.

"The timing for safe deployment is also dependent on favourable weather conditions."

Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt last week said an independent review into BOM was currently underway and was providing the opportunity "to look at tools and services, and how BOM can continue to improve its service offering to Australians into the future".

The Cape de Couedic wave buoy is SA's only BOM-operated wave buoy.

When functioning, it issues real-time and historical data about significant and maximum wave heights, average and peak wave period, and swell direction.

Its data is used by commercial and recreational fishers, surfers and the likes of abalone divers, who use swell period data to gauge water visibility.

While BOM was "working to restore bureau observations", the spokesperson advised communities to view data from several spotter buoys launched along SA's coastline by Flinders University researchers this decade.

Supported by two coastal councils and running in conjunction with the South Australian Research and Development Institute, SA Water, the Environment Protection Authority, the SA Department for Environment and Water, and the Integrated Marine Observing System, the project seeks to better inform coastal management and sand drift, and mitigate erosion.