Unmanned ocean vehicles: improving the marine monitoring strategy in the Macaronesian region

Abstract

Current advances on key marine technology fields provide nowadays a broad range of autonomous unmanned platforms addressed for an efficient and cost-effective monitoring in both coastal and open-ocean areas, with a suitable level of success in terms of endurance, reliability and useful gathered information. Recent examples in this way are the unmanned ocean vehicles able to monitor autonomously the oceans for extended periods of time fitted with different payload sensor configura-tions to be used for a wide variety of applications. PLOCAN carried out in partnership with international companies, different testing missions in the Macaronesian area with successful and very promising scientific, technical and operational results from these cutting-edge technologies in subtropical areas as they are the surrounding waters of the ESTOC site observatory in Canary Islands archipelago.