News:
21 May 2009: After a successful trial of Bellamite as observing platform in the RAPID Watch Project, a new glider has been assigned to this project, called Dynamite. In addition, the NOC team has got a new member: Paul Wright, who did a great job in successfully deploying his first glider today. Dynamite is scheduled for recovery in August. Follow the progression of Dynamite on the near-real time data page.
24 November 2008: Bellamite has successfully been recovered today. The wind was sort of allright (15-16 knots) but the swell was considerable, making it not such a nice experience. From the data it can be seen that the glider went increasingly more slow, for some still unkonwn reason. This is going to be the main activity here at Gran Canaria, before packing all up and send it back to the UK.
10 September 2008: Glider Bellamite will be deployed next week in the frame work of the RAPID Watch Project. The glider is scheduled to operated until the beginning of December 2008. As usual, the near-real time performances of the glider can be followed on the live data page.
17 April 2008: Apologies for failing to announce the (succesfull deployments of our gliders in January 2008. The news of today is that yesterday we also succesfully recovered our three gliders after having spent 3 months in the Mediterranean and travelled for thousands of km's. In the end, the all ended up near the coast of Toulon, about 200 m between eachother within 10 minutes. Just like picking ripe fruit... See the usual page for the glider tracks and online data.
3 Septempber 2007: Igloo, a python-based alternative for Webb Research's Gliderview application has undergone some major improvements, I hope. Certainly major changes... It is for download here! Comes with a manual and without warranty. If you don't work with Webb Slocum gliders anyway, then there is no point in downloading it. It will not work. As usual, bug reports/fixes and requests are welcome.
16 Jun 2007: All NOC gliders are still like fish on the dry earth, but at the Institute of Marine Research (IMR), Norway, they are in the middle of a successful deployment of glider Snotra, north east of Iceland. Have a look here!
23 May 2007: The data of both Gulf of Lions missions are now available from the Archive section.
30 Mar 2007: All three gliders have been recovered from the third and last Tethys cruise. With the return of the Tethys on Monday, the measurement campaign has come to an end.
30 Mar 2007: I have been a bit sloppy with keeping the information
here up to date and that is because there is so much information to
put in here: a lot of things have happened last couple of weeks. For
the curious, I will give a summary. With the batteries having arrived
just in time also Bellamite was prepared for launching, together with
Locean's glider Pytheas. So at the end of the week we launched the
gliders Ammonite, Bellamite and Pytheas. Coprolite was left behind
because we were waiting for a new hull to be shipped for the US. All
gliders did well, except that Ammonite did not surface from its test
dive. Later we found out it got stuck in the mud at 600 m... It was
recovered on Saturday and brought back for inspection as the safety
mechanism didn't work as should. The next week we swapped the hulls
from Ammonite and Coprolite, and prepared Coprolite, giving some time
for Ammonite to inspect. Unfortunately, the weather conditions
worsened. The week after, Coprolite was launched on Monday
morning. The hull arrived from the US and Ammonite who donated its
hull to Coprolite was fixed including the safety mechanism. Ammonite
was launched a few days later. The three gliders arrived in the Medoc
area and flew the same lines as during the previous leg.
With
respect to convection, we were very unlucky as it was an exceptional
warm winter with hardly any convection at all, except during last
week, but it was too late and not long enough for the stratification
to be fully broken down. However, we can observe some mixing having
occurred in the upper 400 m, see here for an
example. Around the 22 of March you can see that the upper 400 m
are fully mixed, in contrast with the period before.
22 February 2007: All gliders have been recovered and are being prepared for the next deployment any time form this weekend onwards. Bellamite was handed over to us last Monday (19 february) by the French Navy. Cool guys, they invited us for coffee and we got a tour de "Chasseur des Mines Verseau". During the second leg of the cruises with the Tethys II Coprolite was recovered as it was at the surface having a leak detected. On the way to shore, the remaining glider Ammonite was recovered by the Tethys team as well. From Tuesday onwards we have been working hard to change batteries and reballast the gliders. Ammonite is ready to go. But, we're still waiting for the spare batteries to be delivered. Again the customs are not our friends... Hopefully we will get all the parts this afternoon and also Bellamite can be prepared for redeployment. The fate of Coprolite is a bit uncertain, as the leak was caused by a chip in the carbon hull, just there where the o-rings seal.
16 February 2007: Finally the web page with Live Data has been fixed so that those lonely souls still using Micro$oft I.E. also can view where the gliders are. (At this moment we should speak in singular though, as only Ammonite is still left...)
15 February 2007: Since a few days Coprolite detected some water inside, which is bad bad news. We decided not to send it down anymore as that may put the glider seriously at risk. The good news is that the glider got successfully recovered by the Tethys II yesterday. Inspection will follow next week.
8 February 2007: Bellamite has been recovered successfully by the French navy at 3 a.m. The flashing proved extermely helpful. More details will follow, when available.
7 February 2007: As can be seen from the Live Data page
Bellamite is not behaving properly. It is not willing to dive anymore. The working hypothesis
is that the feedback of the oil volume is lost. The 15th or 16th of February the glider
can be recovered (weather permitting). Depending on its drifting course (due to
the currents and wind) a resque operation may be set up before.
The good news is that Ammonite and Coprolite are still doing fine.
A new section, devoted to the Gulf of Lions has been added. It provides (for the time being little) background information and some links to weather, currents and heat fluxes forecasts. Also some pictures of the deployment can be seen here.
24 January 2007: Last Monday the two remaining gliders, Ammonite and Coprolite were successfully deployed. Again, the gliders are left for a virtual mooring just south of Toulon and are now redirected to the convection area. Bellamite has already arrived in the area and is now heading for the waypoints on a North-South line, slightly NW of 42 N, 5 E.
Tomorrow the Tethys II is scheduled to leave the harbour of Toulon to make CTD casts in the same area.
20 January 2007: This week we arrived at Toulon, France, from where we are going to deploy our three gliders for a period of 5 weeks. This period is the first of two periods of 5 weeks, with one week in between, during which we are trying to observe deep convection in the Medoc area. Two days ago, we tried to deploy the three gliders on one day, as a Mistral was forecasted for yesterday and the weekend. Bellamite was deployed successfully. Ammonite was a bit of problem as the initial tests on shore indicated a non-responsive depth sensor. Unfortunately that became the reality and Ammonite was taken back to shore. Due to the time lost testing Ammonite, there was not enough time left to finalise all the tests before deployment of Coprolite. Next Monday or Tuesday we try again to deploy both Ammonite and Coprolite. The depth sensor of Ammonite is got to work.
Bellamite was left doing a virtual mooring, diving to about 700 m and staying at about 43 N 5'59" E. Today we are confident enough to sent it off towards the Medoc convection area (42 N, 5 E), but going South first. All can be monitored at the map of the Gulf of Lions.
2 November 2006: Both Bellamite and Coprolite have been successfully recovered after about 40 days at sea. The data collected can be found in the data archive.
17 October 2006: Last week we deployed the three NOC gliders 16 Nm North off the coast of Mallorca. Ammonite and Coprolite were deployed on Tuesday 10 Oct. Ammonite was taken on board again later that day for checking up the ARGOS transmitter; Coprolite was left in the water. The next day, both Bellamite and Ammonite were deployed. This time we left them out both.
Ammonite showed a leak abort and the symptoms got worse. Like the weather. Because of increasing wind and waves, the die-hards from Imedea collected it on Sunday morning (and even deployed their glider Maya!). So far, Bellamite and Coprolite are still flying, only with minor issues. Estimates on Bellamite's batteries indicate that she will run out of juice before 6 November, the scheduled recovery date. An energy saving mode will be uploaded on 18 October. For the curious, only the fate of Coprolite is visible from the live data web page (and if you use a decent webbrowser, i.e. not Windoze internet exploder), as Bellamite is temporarily hosted at Webb research's dockserver.
14 September 2006: Working version of live data page. Follow the fate and results of our (simulator) gliders here!
13 September 2006: Initial release of web pages