Development and deployment of ocean gliders on the Newfoundland Shelf

Since the Canadian Centre for Ocean Gliders has acquired four underwater gliders, the Institute for Ocean Technology of the National Research Council Canada, and, Memorial University of Newfoundland, in St. John's, Newfoundland, have been exploring the potential for these autonomous underwater vehicles to gather oceanographic information with application to the Newfoundland Shelf. During the course of the summer 2006, we conducted several brief deployments, and, two deployments that lasted 21 days and 7 days respectively around Newfoundland. A glider operation can be separated into several different phases. It begins with a pre-deployment phase, involving precise ballasting, battery checks, communication checks and mission simulation. The second phase, the actual deployment, includes the launch, communication test, brief test dive and finally mission execution. The third phase consists of mission control and data check. Phase four, the most desirable, is the recovery. The final phase of the operation is post-mission check out, full data download and swapping consumables, such as sacrificial anodes and batteries if necessary.NRC publication: Ye