Image

Glide Path

An ocean glider is brought back aboard the R/V Knorr by a WHOI engineering team including (left to right) Jim Ryder, John Lund, Jeff Pietro and Aidan Alai. The glider was deployed off Massachusetts at the Pioneer Array as part of the NSF-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative. Gliders monitor physical, optical and chemical properties at the boundary between New England coastal waters and the Atlantic Ocean. Combined with data collected from moorings, gliders help scientists understand complex coastal systems and the role of filaments and eddies in the exchange of heat, salt and other properties between the shelf and the open ocean.(Photo courtesy of Al Plueddemann, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)