Chasing the Needle in the S. Pacific

Today I had a special treat.  My company participates in a program launching data gathering equipment for US research group.  These things are called spray gliders, and it is a not propelled robotic sub that dives in the oceans for about 3 months at a time.  Today we picked up one that traveled hundreds of miles, and made about 700 dives since July 4th of this year.  They measure depth, temperature, salinity, and location.  They dive every few hours and when the come up the roll over so that fin serves as an antenna to send data to the researchers.

Now every few months they must be found and pulled out of the water to be cleaned and have the batteries changed.  That is what we did today.  Now when they are finished diving they send there gps coordinates every 15 to a satellite phone that we have on the boat.  It sounds easy but is a bit of luck when you are in a small boat in 5 foot rolling seas, your gps is only accurate to 20 meters, and the satellite phone is not as reliable as all might like to think.  Today we got lucky and spotted it in about 30 mins.   All that there is to spot is about a 6 inch tall orange fin pointing out of the water.  We found it and loaded it on the boat, it had small scratches and lost of odds and ends attached to, all in all it was a very successful trip.

More info on the glider is here http://spray.ucsd.edu/

Luke