Pioneer MAB AUV Mobile Assets (CP16MOAS)

Two kinds of Mobile Assets survey the area in and around the array of moorings at the Coastal Pioneer MAB Array – Coastal Gliders and Coastal Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs).

Glider Track Lines are:

• Offshore Flux, providing repeat north-south transects, nominally over the 1000 m isobath, to allow estimation of cross-shelf fluxes.
• Moored Array, providing repeat along-shelf transects at ~100 m depth while circumnavigating a triangle created by the three Coastal Surface Moorings
• Offshore Mesoscale, providing information about mesoscale features within the slope sea that may impinge on the continental shelf.
• Cross-Shelf, providing repeat cross-shelf transects along the east-west moored array line from the shelfbreak to ~30 m depth.

AUV Mission Tracks are:

• Cross-Shelf, providing synoptic cross-shelf “snapshots” of the frontal zone.
• Along-Shelf, providing synoptic along-shelf “snapshots” of submesoscale structure in the vicinity of the shelfbreak front.

Four Coastal Gliders (Teledyne-Webb Slocum Gliders) sample large, mesoscale features through a broad region (2900 square kilometers) of the outer continental shelf between the shelf break and the Gulf Stream.  The role of these gliders in monitoring this broader area is to resolve rings, eddies and meanders from the Gulf Stream as they impinge on the shelf break front. These Teledyne-Webb Slocum Gliders fly through the water column along saw-tooth paths, penetrating the sea surface and diving down to a maximum depth of 1000 meters.

Two Coastal AUVs (HII REMUS-600 AUVs) travel along transects across the shelf-break frontal system extending beyond the mooring array, covering an area approximately 1000 square kilometers in size centered on the array of moorings. The primary role of the AUVs is to resolve cross- and along-front “eddy fluxes” due to frontal instabilities, wind forcing, and mesoscale variability. These AUVs travel along saw-toothed transects, penetrating the sea surface and diving down to a maximum depth of 600 meters.

Deployment Photos

Instruments

This site includes following instruments. To learn more about an instrument type, select its name on the left. To see the relevant data streams for a particular instrument, select the instrument code in the first column which will take you to the OOI Data Portal.