The buoy ("Station 13010 - Soul") was part of the PIRATA system, a set of 17 buoys installed in the tropical Atlantic Ocean since 1997 by the United States, France, and Brazil. Like the other buoys in the system, it was named after a musical genre. It was an Autonomous Temperature Line Acquisition System (ATLAS) buoy that was conical in shape and 3.8 m high. It was anchored by a cable to the seabed.

The buoy disappeared less than a year after its installation,