South Australia's long-suffering wave buoy is expected back at sea this week, after what the Bureau of Meteorology says was a lightning strike knocked it out through winter. As 891 ABC Adelaide reports, the buoy off Cape du Couedic on Kangaroo Island — the only wave buoy the bureau operates in SA — has now suffered three outages since August 2024, including one lasting nine months, and has been functional for only about 10 months in two years.
The latest failure came on 30 May, when the buoy stopped transmitting during stormy weather. "Investigation of the damaged wave buoy showed severe electrical damage consistent with a lightning strike," a bureau spokesperson said. "There are significant weather extremes where the Cape du Couedic wave buoy is located which can impact the equipment itself, but also the safety of retrieval and maintenance operations." Replacement parts have been procured, with repairs and redeployment planned this week "pending an appropriate period of safe weather conditions".
The buoy's run of bad luck reads like a maritime curse. Its troubles began in mid-2024 with erroneous data, and it was taken offline that September — then global shortages of specialist mooring equipment stretched the repair to nine months. About five months after it returned, a mooring failure in November 2025 saw it break free and wash up on Kangaroo Island, costing another six weeks.
When it works, the buoy issues real-time data on wave heights, wave period and swell direction — information used by commercial fishers, recreational fishers, surfers, and professional divers who consider it critical to working safely. The ABC asked the bureau how much has been spent on repairs since August 2024; the costs have not been divulged.
That silence has given the story a political edge. "The bureau spent $96.5 million on a website which did not meet the needs of Australians while basic weather infrastructure has been allowed to fail," said federal opposition environment spokesperson David Nouri, adding that the bureau already faces an independent review and that the auditor-general found it "only partly effective" at managing its observing-network assets. "South Australians are entitled to know how much has been spent trying to repair this buoy and why a permanent solution has not been delivered."
Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt said the government understood the importance of "timely, reliable weather data to Australians". "I'm aware that the Cape du Couedic wave buoy has been damaged and that BOM intends to undertake repair work this week, pending safe conditions," he said. "This is complex technology working in extreme conditions." For the divers and fishers who check its feed before heading out, the hope is simpler: that the third redeployment is the one that sticks.