Year
2015–2018
Operation Area
Bering Sea, Chukchi Sea
Purpose
Saildrone began a partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement to develop and refine the Saildrone uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) sensor suite for high-quality oceanic and atmospheric data collection. In 2015, a series of missions to the US Arctic was launched as part of the Innovative Technology for Arctic Exploration (ITAE) program.
Annual missions were performed 2015 – 2018 focusing on a range of science objectives: studies of sea surface temperature and salinity (2015); acoustic fisheries surveys (2016 – 2018) and examination of the marine predator/prey relationship of northern fur seals (2016 – 2017); tracking the elusive North Pacific right whale (2016 – 2017), and studying air-sea carbon fluxes (2017 – 2018).
Results
This series of missions gathered measurements to identify ongoing changes to the Arctic ecosystem and how those changes may affect the food-chain as well as large-scale climate and weather systems, as well as explored the capabilities and limitations of the Saildrone platform.
