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Long-distance Traveller

After a two-and-a-half month journey from Miami, a Spray glider is recovered on the continental shelf southeast of Woods Hole in June 2015. By changing its buoyancy, the glider flies along a sawtooth path through the upper kilometer (0.6 mile) of the ocean, collecting measurements of temperature, salinity, and currents. With support from Eastman Chemical and WHOI’s Ocean and Climate Change Institute, Robert Todd (blue life jacket) navigated the glider back and forth across the Gulf Stream as part of a pilot program to demonstrate that gliders can be used to routinely monitor this key component of the Earth’s climate system along the East Coast. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)