PIRATA (Brazil, France, USA) has deployed between 1997 and 2001, an array of 12 ATLAS buoys with the objective of monitoring, describing and understanding the evolution of sea surface temperature, upper ocean thermal and saline structure, net heat budget, air-sea fluxes of momentum, latent and sensible heat and fresh water in the tropical Atlantic. The oceanic and meteorological observations are transmitted to shore via satellite and are available in near real-time on the Internet. They are communicated to the Global Telecommunication System and readily available for ocean and weather prediction models. The ultimate objective of PIRATA is real-time ocean monitoring to enable resource prediction in the adjacent countries.