The National Weather Service is asking Hawai'i's maritime community to help safeguard offshore buoys that provide meteorologists with critical data for weather and tsunami forecasts.

The request came yesterday after a series of incidents in which buoys were damaged or cut from their moorings.

Officials said that since November, three weather buoys around the Hawaiian Islands have been damaged and several tsunami buoys around the Pacific stopped transmitting after severe weather or commercial ships broke mooring lines.

Two weather buoys suffered serious damage and stopped sending data. A third continues to transmit but has drifted thousands of miles to the west because of a cut mooring line.