The Wave Chasers have succeeded at something that’s never been done before: installing a re-chargeable deep sea robot to gather data on internal waves every hour or so for an entire year. After many attempts and some very bad luck, this was their last chance to get the system in the water.
“It feels like we hit the winning basket right at the buzzer,” says lead scientist Matthew Alford.
After six years and three foiled attempts at launching a re-chargable Wirewalker robot into the depths of the Pacific Ocean, the Wave Chasers team can finally declare success. The system is installed in 4,700 meters of water in the Kauai Channel, about 80 miles off the coast of Oahu. The system is already collecting temperature, velocity and salinity samples and uploading that data to the Wave Chasers research team via satellite.
The information gathered by the Wirewalker robot will help the Wave Chasers better understand deep sea internal waves and their role in climate change.
