Canada to Enlist USVs for Ocean Monitoring and Measurements
In an effort to monitor the oceans in Canada, the country’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is purchasing up to seven unmanned, semi-autonomous gliders. The gliders will be responsible for patrolling the coastlines and taking water samples and measurements, including measuring water temperature, salinity and oxygen levels.
Using gliders has a number of benefits, but the one down side is that they only travel between 0.5 to 1.5 kilometers per hour. However, the battery life in the gliders are long lasting, allowing them to travel hundreds to thousands of kilometers on a single charge. They can also dive hundreds of meters below the surface of the ocean.
This isn’t the first time that Canada has used gliders; in fact, they’ve been using them for several years in conjunction with two local universities, Dalhousie University and the University of Victoria. But this will be the first time that the DFO has owned their own gliders. The plan as of right now is to use two of the gliders for the west coast, with the remaining five to be used on the east coast.
