Deployments
Projects
The ESD deploys gliders under several different projects:
FREEBYRD: Operation FREEBYRD is a long-term program to replace ship-based surveys with autonomous vehicles to estimate Antarctic krill biomass in support of the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).
REFOCUS: Deployments in support of the REFOCUS project…
ECOSWIM: Operation ECOSWIM is for glider surveys in the California CCE off of Humboldt and Morro Bay, California, in the Southern California waters of the Pacific Ocean. These surveys may collect krill biomass estimates, among other scientific goals.
SANDIEGO: Test deployments off of San Diego. These deployments may be, for instance, to test a glider before it goes to the Antarctic, or to test new sensors and/or sensor configurations for the Enhanced Data Acquisition Passive Acoustics Strategic Initiative or the Uncrewed Systems Strategic Initiative.
Deployments
The below table lists all (in progress) ESD (and formerly AERD) glider deployments, along with basic information about the deployment. The table also includes links to post-deployment reports, and links to data files where they exist. See below for details on the data links.
Note that deployment names are always ‘glider name’-‘year-month-day’. For instance, deployment amlr08-20220530. Is the deployment of glider amlr08 that began on 30 May 2022.
See this spreadsheet (NOAA internal) for more details.
| Year | Project | Deployment | Location | Sensors | Report | ERDDAP | Internal Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | SANDIEGO | unit_1024-20250224 | San Diego | CTD, Ecopuck, PAR, WISPR | link | {in progress} | {in progress} |
| —– | —– | —– | —– | —– | —– | —– | —– |
| 2024/25 | FREEBYRD | amlr01-20241120 | Antarctic | CTD, Optode, Ecopuck, AZFP | link | {in progress} | {in progress} |
| 2024/25 | FREEBYRD | amlr08-20241120 | Antarctic | CTD, Optode, Ecopuck, Nortek | link | {in progress} | {in progress} |
| —– | —– | —– | —– | —– | —– | —– | —– |
| 2024 | ECOSWIM | calanus-20241019 | Humboldt | CTD, Optode, Ecopuck, Nortek | {in progress} | {in progress} | glider; acoustics |
| 2024 | REFOCUS | george-20240907 | Santa Barbara | CTD, Optode,Ecopuck, Narrow Shadowgraph | link | {in progress} | {in progress} |
| 2024 | REFOCUS | george-20240530 | San Diego | CTD, Optode, Narrow Shadowgraph | link | {in progress} | images |
| 2024 | REFOCUS | john-20240312 | San Diego | CTD, Optode, Nortek, Shadowgraph | link | {in progress} | {in progress} |
| 2024 | REFOCUS | ringo-20240312 | San Diego | CTD, Optode, Nortek, Wide Shadowgraph | link | {in progress} | {in progress} |
| … | … | … | … | … | … | … | … |
Data Links
The above table contains several links to different data products.
The ‘ERDDAP’ column will contain the link to the glider dataset when it is published to the ERDDAP of the IOOS National Glider Data Assembly Center.
The ‘Internal Data’ column contains links to various ESD-internal data products, stored within the ESD Google Cloud Platform (GCP) project. Users will only be able to access these data if they have been granted appropriate permissions within the project. Currently there are three different types of internal data links:
- glider: Data products from the ‘base’ glider processing workflow. The most relevant data products for users will likely be the ‘science’ timeseries, and the gridded science data.
- plots: Link the ‘plots’ folder, within the deployment folder. See a description of the structure of this folder here.
- acoustics: Link the ‘acoustics’ deployment folder. See a description of the structure of this folder here.
- imagery: Link the the ‘raw imagery’ deployment folder. See a description of the structure of this folder here