Highlights from latest sea-operations in the Macaronesian region with unmanned autonomous marine gliding vehicles

Abstract

Current advances on key marine technology fields provide nowadays a broad range of autonomous unmanned platforms addressed for an efficient and cost-effective ocean observation, with a suitable level of success in terms of endurance, reliability and useful gathered information. In this context, a multidisciplinary family of unmanned autonomous vehicles addressed to monitor both coastal and open-ocean areas plays a relevant role. Over the last months, some of the newest unmanned gliding-vehicle technologies have been tested within the context of the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN) in varied operational scenarios aiming different technical and scientific purposes, all of them joined in direct partnership with the company provider and other R&D institutions in some cases. Among others, representative examples in this way are the missions under the name Challenger One, Volcano and SB02 through surface and underwater gliding vehicles, performed mostly in the surrounding subtropical waters of the ESTOC ocean observatory in the Canary Islands archipelago. The main gathered operational and scientific results from these missions are presented in this work as a sign of new ocean observing technologies within the framework of the Macaronesian Marine and Maritime Observation Strategy (R3M) and linked with the current European rules, programs and projects in this field.