New Technology to Help Ocean Explorers
The Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel, Germany, recently received the largest fleet of so-called gliders in Europe. These instruments can search the oceans like sailplanes up to a depth of 1000 meters. In doing so they only devour as much energy as a bike light. In a few years up to ten of these high-tech instruments will take measurements to better interpret many processes in the oceans. Presently researchers and technicians set up the devices for their first mission as a ’swarm’ in the tropical Atlantic
The cargo of the two-meter-long yellow diving robots consists of modern electronics, sensors and superior batteries. With these devices the marine scientists can gather selective measurements from the ocean interior while staying ashore themselves. Furthermore, the gliders not only broadcast the data in real time, but they can be reached by the scientists via satellite telephone and programmed with new mission parameters.
As such the new robots represent a crucial accessory to previous marine sensor platforms.
“Ten years ago we started to explore the ocean systematically with profiling drifters. Today more than 3000 of these devices constantly provide data from the ocean interior,” explains Professor Torsten Kanzow, oceanographer at IFM-GEOMAR. This highly eminent program has one major disadvantage: the pathways of the drifters cannot be commanded.
A very successful mission using a single glider took place between August and October 2009 in the Atlantic Ocean, south of the Cape Verde Islands. The robot carried out measurements along a more than 1000 kilometers long track autonomously, before it was reclaimed by the German research vessel METEOR.
Now, for the first time the scientists in Kiel prepare a whole fleet of gliders for a concerted mission. After final tests the robots will be released mid-March 2010 at about 60 nautical miles north-east of the Cape Verde Island of Sao Vicente. For two months they will look into physical and biogeochemical quantities of the Atlantic Ocean around the oceanographic long-term observatory TENATSO.
Goals of the experiment lead jointly by Prof. Torsten Kanzow, Prof. Julie LaRoche (marine biology) and Prof. Arne Körtzinger (marine chemistry) are to get new insights into water circulation and stratification as well as their affect on chemical and organic processes. With the glider swarm the scientists can sample a complete “sea-volume” and not just a single point or a single cross-section in the ocean. The gliders will be remotely controlled from a control centre at the IFM-GEOMAR in Kiel.
See Related Report: Ocean Energy Report
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