NOAA completed the Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) array in the Pacific Ocean in 1994 after 10 years of development, during which it deployed 400 buoys on 83 separate cruises to detect El Niño and La Niña. Today, NOAA and the Japanese government maintain 70 permanent buoys moored along the equatorial Pacific that collect data essential to forecasting El Niño and La Niña.