Backyard Buoys is a community-led ocean observing project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator program.

For the project, Sofar Ocean is partnering with three regional systems of the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System — PacIOOS in Hawaiʻi and the U.S. Pacific Islands, NANOOS in the northwest U.S., and AOOS in Alaska — as well as Indigenous partners from the Pacific Islands, Washington coast, and Alaska.