Deep Slocum Gliders Monitor Oceans

A team of technicians, led by Clayton Jones, has developed a triad of gliding robotic devices called Deep Slocum that would prove to be an essential tool in the task of exploring and monitoring the oceanic waters, providing a better insight on its characteristics. The gliders, called Ammonite, Bellamite and Coprolite, are much cheaper, more agile and better equipped than other scientific instruments used in this respect.

Currently, they are performing a test trek between the Canary Islands and the African continent in a project initiated in September by a team under the command of David Smeed from the National Oceanography Center in Southampton, UK. The gliders are constantly GPS-monitored as they relay data regarding water features, such as salinity, temperature and currents, all required by the team's Rapid Climate Change - Will the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation Halt? (Rapid-WATCH) program.

 

The robots are supposed to enhance the data amount and quality provided by the older 25 submersed instruments used by the scientists in the Atlantic Ocean. The 1.6-meter long devices are less prone to be caught in fishing nets, damaged by trawlers or attacked by sharks (although the last is thought to have happened during a previous trial). Also, they require little energy, and can perform 3,000 kilometer-long journeys and stay underwater for 100 days before their batteries need to be recharged.

 

They are also unaffected by cold temperatures, which caught the attention of Karen Heywood from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, who wants to add more instruments at the expense of battery life so that her adapted gliders would help her perform a series of tests in Antarctica's waters. "The gliders offer an opportunity to go to places that are really rough and windy, where there is lots of sea ice. With the glider data our observations won't be biased towards the summer months," she explained, as quoted by New Scientist.