Capt. John Smith survived hostile fire 400 years ago during his daring explorations of the Chesapeake Bay.
The buoy that bobbed at the mouth of the Patapsco River as part of a historic water trail bearing Smith's name to provide anglers and boaters with valuable information hasn't fared nearly as well.
Thursday, the bullet-riddled marker was pulled from the water and put in the repair shop. The Natural Resources Police have opened a tip line as they investigate the damaging of a piece of federal property.
Someone from the moron family decided to use the $120,000 buoy for target practice last month - July 24 at 7:25 p.m., to be precise - blasting apart the top navigational beacon and punching holes in three of the buoy's four solar panels. The vandalism happened just two days after the one-year anniversary of the buoy's deployment.
It appears that the weapons of choice were a small-bore rifle and a shotgun.
I'm guessing someone knows who did it because trigger-happy thugs love to run their mouths.
The Patapsco "smart" buoy was the third along the Capt. John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail, the nation's first water-based national historic trail that follows the explorer's 3,000-mile trip around the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Real-time information about currents, waves and wind collected by its sensors was transmitted to a toll-free phone number, 877-BUOY-BAY, and to a Web site, www.buoybay.org.
The buoys - the result of a partnership of citizen groups, Verizon and the government - were installed with great fanfare. A year ago, as a group of us watched from a press boat, a crane on an Army Corps of Engineers work boat swung the Patapsco buoy over the side, gently lowering it into 20 feet of water between Six Foot Knoll and Seven Foot Knoll. The buoy, which began broadcasting data while sitting on the work boat deck, kicked into high gear as its sensors touched the water.
Maryland officials were elated that they would be able to track water-quality trends and quickly gather information to help pinpoint the cause of summertime fish kills.
The buoy had another use, too, acting as an electronic tour guide for the John Smith water trail. John Page Williams, a longtime naturalist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, provided a historical narration of Smith's 1607 and 1608 voyages that could be received by cell phones.
