Our friend and volleyball companion Xiaodong (Sheldon) Zhang is a professor at UND and recently his buoy became lost, either due to natural circumstances (unlikely) or deliberate human malfeasance (likely). You can read the full article on the
Grand Forks Herald. If you happen to know the whereabouts of his buoy, please contact him.
UND says buoy with scientific payload is missing from Devils Lake
UND is reporting a missing buoy. Anchored in the middle of Devils
Lake, the lonesome buoy would report water quality and its location
every 10 minutes to scientists at UND.
Anchored in the
middle of Devils Lake, the lonesome buoy would report water quality and
its location every 10 minutes to scientists at UND. It went
silent about a week and a half ago, and, when the scientists went to
search for it Tuesday, it had disappeared, said professor Xiaodong Zhang
with the Department of Earth System Science and Policy.
Now,
Zhang is asking those in the Devils Lake area to be on the lookout for
the buoy, which is 5 feet tall, 5 feet wide, 80 pounds, bright yellow
and obsessed with salinity, turbidity and other measures of water
quality. It last called home to say it was two miles northeast of the Spirit Lake casino.
Zhang
won’t speculate why the buoy went mising. It’s unwieldy to move and,
even though the university spent $30,000 to build the scientific sensors
attached to the buoy, all of that is worthless to the average person,
he said.
There is some urgency because cold weather is
coming and, if the buoy is still on the lake somewhere when it freezes,
that could damage the sensors, he said. And more people will be able to
get to it by walking on ice and maybe messing with it, he said.
Major project
The
buoy first went in the water in fall 2011 as part of a $3 million
project funded by NASA. UND’s goal is to figure out how the saltiness of
the water changes as the lake floods and as the climate of the region
changes.
It was initially anchored in Stump Lake, which is
now connected to Devils Lake because of flooding, and was moved to
Devils Lake this year. The buoy was last seen Oct. 21 by
state Health Department workers doing water quality surveys and last
called home at 8 a.m. Nov. 9, Zhang said.
He wasn’t worried
when he didn’t hear from the buoy because it has a habit of not
calling, he said. In cool weather, the batteries sometime drain before
they can be recharged by the solar panel, especially if the solar panel
is frozen, he said.
UND is contacting government agencies
in the Devils Lake region, such as those that run Grahams Island State
Park and Fish and Wildlife agents, and the tribal casino. But it’s also
asking the public for help.
Xiaodong Zhang, co-project leader, with the UND Department of
Earth System Science and Policy, stands by the buoy that he and his
colleagues were to launch Wednesday at Stump Lake. The buoy will
measure and monitor changing conditions, water quality and other issues
in the Devils Lake Basin as more water is moved from the Devils Lake to
the Sheyenne River. It’s part of a $3 million NASA grant to the Northern
Great Plains Center for People and the Environment at UND. The buoy was
tested outside UND’s Clifford Hall before being taken to Stump Lake.
Herald photo by Eric Hylden.
How you can help: If you know where the buoy is contact Zhang at (701) 777-2490 or zhang@aero.und.edu.
On the Web: More info about the water-quality project is at www.und.edu/instruct/zhang.
It was a long day of braving the cold outside, playing tug-of-war, and barking at bunnies from the upstairs window. 
In case you're wondering what pit bulls really look like, this is it. They're huge sleepy lumps. They'd rather snuggle than do just about anything else in the world. 
