A glider named Gretel is deployed in Resurrection Bay in February. Photo by Hank Statscewich.
Through a partnership with UAF’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, AOOS supports a fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles known as gliders. The gliders transmit data to the AOOS Data Portal in near-real time as they travel through the ocean.
This spring, gliders named Shackleton and Gretel traveled hundreds of miles monitoring a series of hydrographic stations known as the Seward Line in the Northern Gulf of Alaska. Shackleton’s mission focused on the spring phytoplankton bloom and Gretel’s echosounder was used to characterize zooplankton and fish distributions. Coincidentally, one of the gliders also detected acoustically tagged sleeper sharks near Seward.
Both gliders have a busy summer ahead. Shackleton will be tracking the movement patterns and habitat usage of Tanner and red king crabs in the Bering Sea. Gretel will contribute data to a National Park Service survey of tidewater inputs from the and Hubbard Glaciers.
See the 2023 February Seward Line Glider Mission data>>
See Gretel’s ecometrics dashboard>>
CONTACT: Carol Janzen, Janzen@AOOS.org