Seagliders Transform Ocean Data Collection

Seagliders Bring a New Era to Ocean Data Collection

Seagliders have arrived at IOLR, generating real excitement among our researchers and the scientists of MERCI — the Mediterranean Sea Research Consortium of Israel, based at Haifa University and uniting IOLR with Israel's leading research universities.

Seaglider ocean research illustration — Robotic seagliders at work in the Mediterranean

So What Is a Seaglider, Exactly?

A seaglider is an underwater robotic drone — an autonomous vehicle that collects physical oceanographic measurements. It covers long distances on very little energy by "porpoising": gliding through the water and using changes in buoyancy as its propulsion. Near the surface it takes in water and glides downward and forward to depth; then it expels the water, regains buoyancy, and glides back up and forward to the surface. Because of this propulsion method, a glider can stay at sea gathering data for as long as two months at a time.

Every seaglider uses GPS and onboard robotics to follow its programmed route. IOLR operators send navigation and control commands to keep the vehicle on task. The measurements it gathers are transmitted by satellite from the surface to IOLR and stored in our data warehouse, where they are used to model the physical state of the sea in three dimensions over time.

The data captured includes temperature and salinity — fed into IOLR's SELIPS four-day forecast of temperature, salinity, currents and sea-level elevation for the southeastern Levantine basin — plus dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll and turbidity, which help estimate ecosystem activity.

A Breakthrough in Real-Time Data

With seaglider vehicles, rich datasets of near-real-time ocean conditions across considerable distances and depths can be collected around the clock, every day of the year. This is a breakthrough in monitoring sea conditions, delivering data in quantities and quality we have never seen before.

This leap forward in physical ocean monitoring is enabled by robotic technology. In operation the vehicles need only minimal supervision, and both acquisition and running costs are reasonable. The alternatives for collecting such data are expensive and limited in capability: fixed-point monitoring stations (instrument buoys), remote sensing (satellite geophysical and optical data), and — most costly and discontinuous of all — ocean cruises by research vessels. So it is no surprise that scientists at IOLR and MERCI are eager to put these vehicles to work.

Where the Project Stands

Three SeaExplorer seagliders were bought from ACSA-ALCEN of France and reached Israel by December 2015. They are based at IOLR-NIO in Haifa. Today the seagliders are up and running. Satellite communication services (Iridium and Argos networks) were set up, and scientists were trained to operate the vehicles — IOLR staffers and scientists from MERCI partner universities completed a week-long course in January 2016. Seaglider maintenance facilities at IOLR-NIO have been built and are ready for use. Sea trials turned up problems that required the manufacturer to send a company engineer to Israel to troubleshoot hardware and software. Once the issues were resolved, IOLR successfully ran a 12-day mission with one of the seagliders. More missions are scheduled for the near future.

How NAF Helped Make It Happen

The North American Friends of IOLR (NAF-IOLR) helped make all of this possible. A group of NAF major donors provided $200K in 2014 and 2015 toward IOLR's share of the nearly $1 million project cost. That seed investment, multiplied many times over by IOLR's MERCI partners (primarily the Weizmann Institute, Hebrew University and Bar Ilan University), gives IOLR and Israel significant new capabilities in oceanography. For physical oceanographers studying and monitoring the Eastern Mediterranean, Israel's acquisition of this seaglider fleet is a major step forward — and the center of activity is IOLR.

All Research Updates

Click to share on Twitter (opens in a new window) · Click to share on Facebook (opens in a new window) · Click to share on Google+ (opens in a new window)

Home Who We Are Contact Donate News & Events Research Updates Twitter Revealing the Red-Tide-Like Phenomenon in Lake Kinneret Invisible Particles Foul Up Desalination Plants Underwater Gardening – Saving Coral Reefs A Generic Integrated Mariculture System for the Mediterranean & Red Sea NAF 2011 Annual Meeting in NY NCM's Dr. Hanna Rosenfeld Selected to Light Torch for Israel Independence Day 64 Murray Barbash, long time Chairman of NAF-IOLR, gone at age 88 IOLR Mourns Loss of Prof. Tom Berman in Galapagos Islands IOLR Prof. Buki Rinkevich addresses JNF Sustainability Summit See all News & Events Research Updates

Seagliders give IOLR and its MERCI partners a flexible, cost-effective way to watch the Eastern Mediterranean continuously. By combining temperature, salinity, oxygen, chlorophyll and turbidity readings, the fleet feeds both the SELIPS forecast and broader ecosystem studies — a capability that would be far harder to sustain with buoys, satellites or research cruises alone.

Seagliders Transform How We Gather Ocean Data