NOC An ambitious two-week mission involving ten marine robots has commenced off northwest Scotland. The third in a series of demonstrator missions, this latest phase sees the largest fleet of marine robotic vehicles simultaneously deployed in UK waters. The mission comprises seven submarine gliders and three surface Wave Gliders that are working together in fleets to collect a range of environmental data.
The National Oceanography Center (NOC) started the ‘Exploring Ocean Fronts’ program in 2014, working with partners across science, government and industry to field-test novel marine autonomous systems for long-endurance ocean monitoring.
Phase one saw a fleet of seven marine robots deployed from the Isles of Scilly, armed with sensors capable of monitoring marine life including plankton, fish, marine mammals and seabirds. The robots travelled up to 150 km offshore, with one of the surface vehicles covering 450 km in 12 days. Three of the surface vehicles were then redeployed in Marine Protected Areas offshore of Plymouth, where they successfully tracked tagged fish using novel acoustic receivers.
Phase two comprised two successive missions off southwest UK in 2015 and 2016, undertaken in partnership with World Wildlife Fund UK (WWF-UK) and Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl); these missions were used to further test how submarine gliders and unmanned surface vehicles can work together to observe relationships between ocean fronts and marine life.