ADCP in Slocum Glider to Support Ocean Observatories Initiative

Engineering and field work is underway to test the full integration of Teledyne RDI’s Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) into the Teledyne Webb Research Slocum Glider. In 2011, Teledyne Webb Research was selected by The Consortium for Ocean Leadership and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to provide coastal G2 Slocum gliders for the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The gliders will support the Pioneer and the Endurance Arrays of the OOI's Coastal and Global Scale Nodes (CGSN).

Teledyne Webb Research’s Slocum G2 gliders are designed for long deployment endurance with the ability to manoeuvre and operate where the total water depth is less than 30 metres and up to 1,000 metres along deeper coastlines. The vehicle construction facilitates swappable payload bays for a multitude of integrated sensor suites. Included in the sensor package is Teledyne RDI’s ADCP, which was specified to provide the programme with current profiling data.

This contract, and the resulting engineering effort, will provide for a fully integrated ADCP with bottom tracking capability that will be used to collect high resolution current profiling data from a glider platform. The intention is to take full advantage of the profiling capability of the glider itself to extend the current measurement range of the ADCP. Removing the platform motion is of critical importance to the success of the application and early testing in shallow water has shown that an initial implementation of the techniques developed by the Lowered ADCP community is yielding good results. Testing of the prototype Slocum G2 glider is currently underway, with the delivery of up to 24 units in support of this programme.

The Ocean Observatories Initiative is a multi-scale observatory that will utilise a network of sensor systems to collect physical, chemical, geological and biological data from the ocean and the sea floor on coastal, regional and global scales.