A giant orange disc settled into the waters off Rongcheng in eastern China’s Shandong province, marking the deployment of what Chinese researchers describe as the world’s first-of-a-kind intelligent ocean-observation buoy. It abandons a mooring architecture that has dominated Western marine engineering since World War II. The six-metre-wide (19.7 feet) platform has completed sea trials and officially joined the Yellow Sea observation network, enabling continuous, real-time monitoring across the.