PLOCAN glider completed a three-month mission between Portugal and Canary archipelago

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This operation was carried out on the scope of iFADO project.

Last 5th May, an ocean monitoring mission between Portugal and the island of Gran Canaria was successfully completed. This activity started 3 months earlier, on 7th February, after an autonomous underwater vehicle was put into operation in the waters of the submarine Nazaré Canyon, through the joint work performed by technicians from PLOCAN and the IH – Hydrographic Institute (Portugal).

The vehicle, model Seaglider M1, covered about 1,800 km between Nazaré Canyon and Taliarte (Gran Canaria). The route included areas nearby several seamounts, including off Madeira, Selvagens and the European Oceanic Time Series Station – Gran Canaria (ESTOC), located 60 miles north of Gran Canaria. Several physicochemical information was collected, such as sea temperature, salinity level, dissolved oxygen concentration, chlorophyll and turbidity of the water column (between the surface and 1,000m deep).

This transnational mission aimed to study the North Atlantic and, more specifically, Macaronesia waters. It was the second iFADO mission carried out by PLOCAN and IH, on the scope of a collaboration initiated through a previous mission carried out between April and June 2019. The full track followed and all scientific information collected by the autonomous underwater vehicle can be accessed at PLOCAN’s data portal.

Please access photo gallery and TV report (min 19:40) about the mission.