Tweeting for Safe Navigation
While fog signals and whistles may be a thing of the past, CIL Aids to Navigation will communicate in a new way this summer with the establishment of a trial social media buoy in Galway Bay. The 1st Class South Cardinal Buoy destined for the Coningbeg Station will take up temporary duty South of Mutton Island in early June until mid-July, two weeks after the finish of the 2012 Volvo Ocean Race (#volvooceanrace).
CIL in cooperation with a number of public and private organisations in the marine sector will distribute a range of navigational, meteorological and oceanographical (metocean) data using the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and onwards via Twitter, Facebook and the Internet. Over 600,000 people are expected to visit Galway during the event with a potential on-line audience of over 89 million.
Our buoy on the spot will also communicate actively on marine safety information, race updates and events associated with this great occasion.
Our friendly and outgoing buoy, conceived and born in Dun Laoghaire is on board ILV Granuaile en route to Galway. We hope you will follow his updates on Twitter (twitter.com/galwaybuoy), Facebook (facebook.com/commissionersofirishlights) and our website and encourage your friends to do the same. Remember the buoy will be at sea while over half a million people celebrate ashore so he will need all the friends he can get.
Celebrate another first for CIL by befriending our buoy. For more details or email info@cil.ie
The AIS information that forms the basis of the tweets is also available in a variety of other different formats using the following links.
Daily
graphical charts
RSS Data feed
JSON Data feed
