ASTORIA — When “Clatsop Spit,” one of its two spherical, yellow Waverider weather buoys located outside the mouth of the Columbia River, “died” from a drained battery, Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego dispatched a two-man team to Astoria to replace it as soon as possible.

And the institution turned to one of its continuing partners, Tongue Point Job Corps Center and its vessel, the Ironwood, as its preferred delivery platform.

The nearly 70-year-old former U.S. Coast Guard buoy tender, loaded with more than 50 student crew members, researchers and Tongue Point staff, delivered a replacement Waverider buoy back into the Pacific Ocean last week, re-establishing a wealth of wave data in the Columbia River Bar used by several agencies.

“We put the buoy in the water, then we deployed the chain to hold it in place,” said Len Tumbarello, the former U.S. Coast Guard sector deputy commander and the new head of Tongue Point’s seamanship program. “The position’s where it needs to be. We talked to the Scripps folks, and it’s transmitting and doing its job again.”

The Clatsop Spit buoy floats about three miles offshore from its namesake in about 82 feet of water. A second Scripps buoy, the “Astoria Canyon,” is about 30 nautical miles west of the mouth of the Columbia River in more than 600 feet of water.

They both record wave height, direction and frequency, along with surface water temperatures.

The information program, based out of the oceanographic institute within the University of California San Diego, displays their live data stream at http://cdip. ucsd.edu and its mobile website, http://cdip.ucsd.edu/m. The information is used by many other marine weather apps and websites.

Dan Jordan of the Columbia River Bar Pilots said his group uses the buoys to determine whether ships can cross the bar safely. Meanwhile, he added, the U.S. Coast Guard uses them for search and rescue and in their bar closures; mariners use them for safety; and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers uses them to study coastal erosion.

When the buoy “died” the week before last, Jordan said Scripps called him. He called the Coast Guard, which towed it to shore.

Then the Ironwood, complete with more than 50 Job Corps student crew members, Tumbarello, former Capt. Patrick Albers, other staff and two researchers from Scripps, took the $60,000 buoy to a GPS-marked location.

“The benefit here is that they (the students) get to see an at-sea evolution, line handling — that type of thing where they can have some hands-on training,” said Tumbarello, who’s still in training himself for a merchant marine license needed before he can captain the Ironwood.

The dead buoy sits at Tongue Point, from which it will head back to UC San Diego for assessment and reconditioning.

Scripps has responded to downed buoys as fast as two to three days after the fact, said Pickering.