A mysterious yellow object that floated into Shelly Bay yesterday turned out to be a large weather buoy that had been anchored off the coast of New Jersey.

The Texas Tower #4 buoy is thought to have drifted about 580 miles over the past few weeks before ending up in Bermuda.

Marine police were dispatched to Shelly Bay after the large oval object was spotted in shallow waters close to the beach.

Bermuda Radio then arranged for the tender, Dragon, to recover the buoy and take it back to the Marine and Ports work area in Dockyard. The Department of Marine and Ports has also made contact with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) buoy programme contractor to arrange for its return to the US.

Further examination revealed that the three-metre discus buoy was owned and maintained by the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) and it had been positioned 75 miles east of Long Beach, New Jersey.

The weather buoy was used for collecting air and sea temperature, wind speed and direction, and air pressure readings. It would have been secured with the weight of a mooring to stabilise it. According to the NDBC’s website, station 44066 went adrift on January 11 and was retrieved a day later. However judging by its arrival in Bermuda yesterday, the data on the website is not up to date. Through its vast network of weather buoys across the globe, the NDBC provides comprehensive systems and marine observations to support the National Weather Service and NOAA.

This is not the first time that a large piece of debris has washed up in Bermuda.

In the summer of 2012, a rocket part floated for hundreds of miles across the Atlantic and was found on Horseshoe Bay.

Experts who came to Bermuda to retrieve it revealed that the piece of satellite casing would have fallen to earth off the coast of Florida just minutes after the rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral in May 2012.

The space debris was flown to Los Angeles on a US Air Force C17 in November 2012 so it could be returned to its owners.