The ocean buoy is an important technical means to obtain ocean environmental parameters as a newly developed detection technology. Traditional ocean buoys use hydraulic devices to change the volume of the oil bladder to achieve fixed-depth control, with slow response speed and long detection cycle. Therefore, it can only be applied to deep-sea environment and lacks the ability of rapid and fine detection in shallow waters (<200m). Considering the above problems, the paper designs a miniature detection buoy, which adopts an innovative inner and outer sleeves design. The miniature detection buoy uses a geared motor to drive the internal screw rotation to quickly stretch and shrink the volume of the shell to achieve the functions of floating, diving and fixed-depth. Moreover, the control performance research is carried out by establishing the dynamics model of the miniature detection buoy. According to the model, the fuzzy adaptive PID control algorithm is used to accurately control the speed and steering of the geared motor. The simulation results show that the buoy system with the fuzzy adaptive PID control algorithm has better fixed-depth accuracy and response speed than the classic PID control algorithm.