Slocum gliders: robust and ready

Buoyancy driven Slocum Gliders were a vision of Douglas Webb, which Henry Stommel championed in a futuristic vision published in 1989. Slocum Gliders have transitioned from a concept to a technology serving basic research and environmental stewardship. The long duration and low operating costs of Gliders allow them to anchor spatial time series. Large distances, over 600 km, can be covered using a single set of alkaline batteries. Since the initial tests, a wide range of physical and optical sensors have been integrated into the Glider allowing measurements of temperature, salinity, depth averaged currents, surface currents, fluorescence, apparent and inherent optical properties. A command/ control center, entitled Dockserver, has been developed that allows users to fly fleets of gliders simultaneously in multiple places around the world via the Internet. Over the last 2.5 years, Rutgers Gliders have logged 27 056 kilometers, and flown 1357 days at sea. Gliders call into the automated Glider Command Center at the Rutgers campus via satellite phone to provide a status update, download data, and receive new mission commands. The ability to operate Gliders for extended periods of time are making them the central in situ technology for the evolving ocean observatories. Off shore New Jersey Gliders have occupied a cross shelf transect and have documented the annual variability in shelf wide stratification on the Mid-Atlantic Bight and the role of storms in sediment resuspension. The sustained data permits scientists to gather regional data critical to addressing if, and how, the oceans are changing. (C) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.