Where the buoys are

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Crewmen repairing a buoy at night Photo: Courtesy of Song Bo Buoys are the floating signposts of the sea. They come in different shapes and sizes and work as signposts for shipping channels or sometimes warn of hazards underwater. They are essential for shipping and Shanghai, which lies at the mouth of the Yangtze River and neighbors the East China Sea, has scores of shipping routes and along these routes are 1,105 buoys. These are not just floating signs - these buoys are equipped with high-tech equipment, solar lights, automatic identification systems and radar recognition systems. They are all set for international standards so ships can pinpoint their locations. Looking after these high-tech signposts is a team of dedicated men who spend much of their working life at sea, repairing, maintaining and renewing buoys so that the sea channels around Shanghai are safe to navigate. Most of the buoys are complex and large objects and weigh at least several tons. But life in the ocean can be cruel and bad weather, heavy seas, sunlight and occasionally being struck by passing ships, all take a toll.The Global Times recently joined the crew of the buoy ship Haixun 167 to see how they worked.Clear orders"Left engine, three," "both engines, seven," "stop!" captain Chen Jianping gave the orders clearly as guided his 1,720-ton ship toward a 2.4-meter-diameter green buoy, listed as No.73 on the Yangtze River.The crew followed the orders precisely and soon the ship was stopped right next to the buoy. "That's hard to do and shows the skills of the captain," said Song Bo, a staff member with the Shanghai Aids to Navigation Department of the Shanghai Maritime Safety Administration. "It's not easy when you drive and have to pull up exactly beside something on land but it's harder to do this on the river because you have to allow for the wind and currents."There is a crane on the front deck of the Haixun 167 and crew now helped as the crane operator swung the arm out to pick up the buoy and pull it on to the ship. When it was in the air, it was obvious there was a lot more of the buoy underwater than was visible from the surface but it was also plain that the paintwork was very rusted and corroded."We put three coats of paint on every buoy," captain Chen explained. This keeps the buoys free from rust for three to three and a half years. But buoys located closer to the open sea corrode more quickly and we have to change them every two years."As the buoy was being raised from the sea, the crew watched it carefully looking at the chain hawsers that swung from the base of the buoy itself to the attached large heavy stone that acted as an anchor. "According to the Chinese lunar calendar, every first and 15th day of a month will see a big tide and this month we also had a perigee or supermoon when the moon was closest to the Earth on August 11 which caused a much higher tide than normal. This high tide shifted the buoy and the anchor from its proper location."Captain Chen said this was potentially hazardous for shipping. At this stage the buoy had drifted some 1,200 meters from its set location so the Haixun 167 and its crew would ensure it was replaced where it belonged.When the buoy was secured on deck two crewmen, Jiang Caofei and Zhang Tao climbed to its top to check its solar lights. After ensuring the buoy was functioning properly the ship took it back to its correct location and lowered it back into the water."Relocating buoys is something we do a lot," captain Chen said. He has been working on the buoy ship for 30 years, being appointed captain in 2005. Other tasks the ship and crew perform include replacing buoys. Sometimes the ship will be given an emergency call to place a warning buoy where there has been an accident or hazardous situation.Emergency services"If a ship sinks in a navigational channel and cannot be seen it's a real danger to other shipping so we get there as quickly as possible and set a warning buoy in place. We are the emergency services unit of the sea here. If there is a shipping hazard we have to warn people about it."Lu Hua is a leading seaman on the Haixun 167. He started on the ship as a cook in 1986 when he was discharged from the army and then became a seaman in 2005. He said July, August and September were the busiest months for the buoy maintenance team because that was the typhoon season."In July, we were at sea for 20 days," Lu said. When there is pleasant calm weather and there are few fixed maintenance tasks the ship might only sail for 10 days in a month."Typhoon Nakri hit Shanghai at the end of July and early August and about 20 buoys drifted out of position or were damaged. We spent four days in a row repairing these and the crew worked day and night."In August 2012 after Typhoon Haikui hit Shanghai, the Haixun 167 had to repair a major large shipping buoy at the mouth of the Yangtze River. When they reached the large buoy in heavy seas it was dark and stormy and they could not use the crane to lift the buoy from the water. Lu and another experienced crewman had to clamber onboard the buoy in turn and repair it fighting the wind, the heavy seas and darkness at the same time. "It took us two risky hours to complete that. Then it took us another 10 hours to get back to the dock on the north Huangpu River."The Shanghai Aids to Navigation Department has another large buoy maintenance ship, the Haixun 169. The two ships and crews usually have alternative months on duty but that August the ships worked throughout the danger period, even traveling to Ningbo to help the authorities there for 10 days.Li Feng is a senior officer of the navigation department's buoy support center and told the Global Times that normally each buoy was equipped with a solar display light and a telemetering and remote control system terminal. "The basic terminal is just a cellphone chip - we use China Mobile's signal to figure the position and voltage on a buoy." One of the specialist buoys in service Photo: Courtesy of Song Bo Costly equipment Each buoy is worth more than 160,000 yuan ($26,025). Some of the buoys are equipped with advanced high-tech instruments and are valued at more than 200,000 yuan. Li admitted that some have gone missing over the years (the LED lights attract some thieves) but it was difficult to track thieves."Our center has people on duty 24/7 and every hour we receive a condition report on every buoy. The center has three stations - the Huangpu River buoy station, the Yangtze River mouth buoy station and the Yangshan Port buoy station - which is each responsible for 300 to 400 buoys. The stations patrol their areas and if something is amiss we can call out the Haixun 167 and Haixun 169," Li said.Nowadays, 20 percent of the buoys that are damaged have been struck by ships moving in the wrong place. Although legally a ship should have to pay for this damage many escape without being detected.The ships' crews are on call 24 hours a day - although emergency call-outs are not as easy for some as for others. Zhang Junjun is a 25-year-old crew member and lives in Minhang district in the southwest of Shanghai while his ship usually berths in the northeast of Shanghai."Once I got a call at 1 am and had to find a taxi to get me to work. Normally they only wait an hour for crew to get onboard," Zhang said.Yang Huan was Zhang's classmate at a maritime vocational school. They joined the Haixun 167 in 2010 and although Yang suffered from seasickness at the beginning, he has got used to life on the sea."Generally, our work isn't complicated. We have to be careful when the cranes are lifting big buoys and anchors and we are handling the hawsers," Yang Huan said. 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