The first mission by an autonomous vehicle from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, collecting environmental and carbon data for climate science.

An historic 15,000 nautical mile, 274-day mission from Cabo Verde to Trieste, Italy. The mission was a public-private partnership between Saildrone and 12 oceanographic research institutions and universities from seven countries. The mission was conducted in two phases: Phase 1 was an eddy survey near Cabo Verde led by the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research (GEOMAR); Phase 2 focused on cross-calibration of CO2 measurements at fixed ocean stations led by the Integrated Carbon Observation System, Ocean Thematic Center (ICOS OTC).

The Results

The two saildrones overcame significant challenges to complete all of the mission's primary and secondary objectives.

The USCG examined the feasibility, costs, and benefits of using low-cost autonomous vehicles to provide persistent maritime domain awareness in remote areas of the ocean.

Six saildrones were stationed off the coast of Hawaii for 30-day demonstration maritime domain awareness capabilities. Each week highlighted a real-world use case for persistent MDA: general traffic monitoring, illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing, search and patrol, and port security. The vehicles are equipped with an optical array with onboard GPU, and machine learning software that fuses the data from all sensors, recognizes targets of interest, and alerts the end-user in near real time.

The Results

Saildrone maintained a fleet at sea for four weeks, without incident, demonstrating persistent MDA in an operational environment.

With ship-based surveys canceled due to COVID-19, NOAA Fisheries turned to Saildrone to collect data to support the sustainable management of America’s largest fishery.

A 6,000 nautical mile round trip mission from San Francisco to the Bering Sea to perform an acoustic survey of Alaska pollock. The vehiciles were deployed in May, completed the survey in late July, and arrived back in San Francisco in early October to deliver the raw data after nearly five months at sea. The saildrones carried a calibrated EK80 38/200 kHz echo sounder, the world-standard instrument for acoustic fisheries surveys on a variety of platforms, as well as oceanographic and meteorological sensors to collect environmental data.

The Results

The data set was delivered on time and will be used by the Fisheries Management Council to inform the sustainable management of the Alaska pollock fishery.

An 8,000 nautical mile mission from San Francisco to the Canadian border to provide modern, accurate mapping data of Alaska’s North Slope and the Bering Sea.

A five-month mission to map the 20-meter and 50-meter isobaths off Alaska's North Slope to, with additional surveys in Norton Sound and Kuskokwim Bay. Metocean data collected simultaneously was shared with the GTS in real time. The mission was operated in collaboration with TerraSond on behalf of NOAA’s National Ocean Service (NOS) Office of Coast Survey (OCS). It is the first step toward resolving major gaps in the charts of the Arctic.

The Results

Data collected will be used to improve nautical charts of the Arctic, and lays the groundwork for future mapping operations in the Arctic and beyond.