In a joint project with NERACOOS, U.S. IOOS, the University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences and Houston-based Sonardyne Inc., a Wave Glider has been launched near Monhegan Island in the Gulf of Maine. Over a period of 6 to 8 weeks it will collect information on water conditions in the Gulf of Maine, including temperature, salinity, and wave height.

Launched and ready to gather data from Sonardyne’s Fetch subsea sensor node. The Wave Glider is the world’s first persistent marine robot that can operate for up to a year at sea, enabling a whole new category of ocean data services.

Two of Sonardyne’s long-life subsea sensor logging nodes, called Fetch, have been deployed onto the seafloor, from where they will make regular subsea measurements using their onboard suite of environmental sensors. When requested to do so, the stored data will be transmitted wirelessly up to the Wave Glider for onward transmission via a satellite link to the shore for near-realtime assessment. This project demonstrates how the combination of Fetch and Wave Glider technologies can expand the spatial and temporal resolution of the installed Ocean Observing System. After the initial deployment in the Gulf of Maine is completed, the Wave Glider will transit to waters off the mid-Atlantic for additional missions, including tsunami detection.

NERACOOS Executive Director, Dr. Ru Morrison said “We are really excited to participate in the testing of new technologies like the Wave Glider and Fetch nodes that could provide a cost effective way to collect ocean information over large areas. The information these technologies can provide will help us better understand and predict what is happening in our coastal waters and could improve our ability to predict events like red tides.”

Subsea World News Staff, May 17, 2012; Image: Sonardyne