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JAKARTA: A crucial part of a tsunami detection system placed in Indonesia's busy Sunda Strait has gone missing amid indications that it was deliberately removed, an Indonesian official said on Thursday.
The device is one of just four installed off Indonesia so far as part of a regional alert system designed to help predict the kind of killer waves that swept the Indian Ocean in December 2004.
It last transmitted data on December 30, 2007, Ridwan Djamaluddin, head of Indonesia's marine technology research centre, told AFP.
The Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami (DART) uses a sensor on the seabed to send signals to a buoy on the surface, which in turn transmits the information to authorities on land.
Djamaluddin said he suspected that the cable holding the buoy in place was snapped after being dragged by a passing object, possibly a ship.
"The buoy is attached with a steel line to an ocean floor unit. The steel line was severed at a depth of 150 metres," he said, and the ocean floor unit was moved a distance of some two kilometres (1.25 miles).
He added that the buoy was designed to withstand a pulling force of up to six tonnes.
Djamaluddin said he believed the unit was deliberately pulled out from its place, but did not say who would have done it.
The other three DARTs are currently located off the coast of Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra island, and at two different points along the western coast of Sumatra.
At least 22 similar devices are planned to be launched as part of the early warning network.
The Indian Ocean region's first DART was deployed off Thailand's Phuket in December 2005.
Indonesia and Thailand were among a dozen nations lashed by a catastrophic earthquake-spawned tsunami in December 2004.
Indonesia, which suffered the highest national death, including 168,000 in Aceh alone, sits on a so-called Pacific Ring of Fire where continental plates collide, meaning earthquakes are a regular and often deadly occurrence.
Offshore, shallow quakes can trigger tsunamis, which occur less frequently but can hit coastal areas quickly and claim a large number of lives.
- AFP/so
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