Floating platforms with mooring systems are used extensively in off-shore operations. Part of the mooring systems are underwater buoyancy elements that are attached to the mooring lines. Loss or damage of a buoyancy element is invisible but changes the characteristics of the mooring system and alters its ability to provide the necessary responses to withstand loads from weather. Damage of a buoyancy element increases the operation risk and could even cause abortion during an oil-offloading. The objective of this paper is to diagnose the loss of a buoyancy element using diagnostic methods. After residual generation, statistical change detection scheme is derived from mathematical models supported by experimental data. To experimentally verify loss of an underwater buoyancy element, an underwater line breaker is designed to create realistic replication of abrupt faults. The paper analyses the properties of residuals and suggests a dedicated GLRT change detector based on a vector residual. Special attention is paid to threshold selection for non ideal (non-IID) test statistics.