What is this?

Apart from being a future bar stool at my house!

I found it on a beach. I thought it might be a float/buoy but it seems to heavily engineered for that. Its about 1200mm tall. Any ideas?

 

Gosh, it is in pretty poor condition!
I think it might be -
Either the remains of a 'beeper buoy' used in longline fishing where they attach a beeper buoy at each end of the longline when it is set, so that they can find it again (using the RDF on board) later when they come back to haul it up, or,
Maybe a weather data buoy from somewhere like NOAA?

 

Yes, it’s a longline buoy.
I hope the rest of the set didn’t get abandoned as well!
I found this a while back, similar, but smaller, may be a large smoke flare?

 

Thanks for your input.

It has also been suggested to me that this is a marker buoy for a fish aggregating device (FAD) or a small wave power action device (tested recently around here). These would account for the seemingly higher cost to produce this type of marker buoy.

If I confirm either of the above locally I will let you know but interested to hear other theory's. It shows life is slow at the moment because its become a talking point around here.

 

That sounds more like it. It goes around a steel piling and has bumpers encircling it. I was thinking some sort of floating piling bumper, but the wave power float makes more sense, especially after your description of recent wave power testing. It would need to be heavy for the downward force to drive the piston and float enough for the upward drive.

Edit: after a second look, it doesn't go around a piling, so... the netting would suggest the other answers are more accurate.

-Will (Dragonfly)

 

The weight is to keep the pole with flag or antenna oriented towards the sky, where it can be seen.
The bumper does what a bumper does, it protects the float and it’s transmitter from bumps during deployment and retrieval.
Longline fisherman truss everything up in line, and are pretty clever about it.
I’ve seen some really ingenious knots and wraps aboard longline boats and equipment.