An ocean first: Underwater drone tracks CO2 in Alaska gulf

SEWARD, Alaska — Within the chilly, uneven waters of Alaska’s Resurrection Bay, all eyes have been on the grey water, on the lookout for one factor solely.

It wasn’t a spout from humpback whales that energy via this scenic fjord, or a sea otter lazing on its again, munching a king crab.

As an alternative, everybody aboard the Nanuq, a College of Alaska Fairbanks analysis vessel, was wanting the place a 5-foot lengthy, vibrant pink underwater sea glider surfaced.

The glider — believed to be the primary configured with a big sensor to measure carbon dioxide ranges within the ocean — had simply accomplished its first in a single day mission.

Designed to dive 3,281 toes and roam distant components of the ocean, the autonomous automobile was deployed within the Gulf of Alaska this spring to supply a deeper understanding of the ocean’s chemistry within the period of local weather change. The analysis may very well be a significant step ahead in ocean greenhouse fuel monitoring, as a result of till now, measuring CO2 concentrations — a quantifier of ocean acidification — was principally completed from ships, buoys and moorings tethered to the ocean ground.

“Ocean acidification is a course of by which people are emitting carbon dioxide into the ambiance via their actions of burning fossil fuels and altering land use,” mentioned Andrew McDonnell, an oceanographer with the Faculty of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences on the College of Alaska Fairbanks.

Oceans have completed people an enormous favor by taking in among the C02. In any other case, there can be far more within the ambiance, trapping the solar’s warmth and warming the Earth.

“However the issue is now that the ocean is altering its chemistry due to this uptake,” mentioned Claudine Hauri, an oceanographer with the Worldwide Arctic Analysis Middle on the college.

The big quantity of information collected is getting used to check ocean acidification that may hurt and kill sure marine life.

Rising acidity of the oceans is affecting some marine organisms that construct shells. This course of may kill or make an organism extra vulnerable to predators.

Over a number of weeks this spring, Hauri and McDonnell, who’re married, labored with engineers from Cyprus Subsea Consulting and Providers, which offered the underwater glider, and 4H-Jena, a German firm that offered the sensor inserted into the drone.

Most days, researchers took the glider farther and farther into Resurrection Bay from the coastal group of Seward to conduct exams.

After its first nighttime mission, a crew member noticed it bobbing within the water, and the Nanuq — the Inupiat phrase for polar bear — backed as much as let folks pull the 130-pound glider onto the ship. Then the sensor was faraway from the drone and rushed into the ship’s cabin to add its information.

Consider the foot-tall sensor with a diameter of 6 inches as a laboratory in a tube, with pumps, valves and membranes shifting to separate the fuel from seawater. It analyzes CO2 and it logs and shops the information inside a temperature-controlled system. Many of those sensor elements use battery energy.

Because it’s the business normal, the sensor is similar as discovered on any ship or lab working with CO2 measurements.

Hauri mentioned utilizing this was “an enormous step to have the ability to accommodate such an enormous and energy hungry sensor, in order that’s particular about this undertaking.”

“I feel she is without doubt one of the first individuals to truly make the most of [gliders] to measure CO2 straight, in order that’s very, very thrilling,” mentioned Richard Feely, the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s senior scientist on the company’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. He mentioned Hauri was a graduate scholar in 2007 when she accompanied him on the primary acidification cruise he ever led.

The problem, Feely mentioned, is to make the measurements on a glider with the identical diploma of accuracy and precision as exams on board ships.

“We have to get confidence in our measurements and confidence in our fashions if we’re going to make vital scientific statements about how the oceans are altering over time and the way it’s going to impression our vital financial methods which might be depending on the meals from the ocean,” he mentioned, noting that acidification impacts are already seen within the Pacific Northwest on oysters, Dungeness crabs and different species.

Researchers in Canada had beforehand connected a smaller, prototype CO2 sensor to an underwater drone within the Labrador Sea however discovered it didn’t but meet the targets for ocean acidification observations.

“The exams confirmed that the glider sensor labored in a remote-harsh setting however wanted extra improvement,” Nicolai von Oppeln-Bronikowski, the Glider Program Supervisor with the Ocean Frontier Institute at Memorial College of Newfoundland, mentioned in an e mail.

The 2 groups are “simply utilizing two several types of sensors to resolve the identical challenge, and it’s all the time good to have two totally different choices,” Hauri mentioned.

There is no such thing as a GPS unit contained in the underwater autonomous drone. As an alternative, after being programmed, it heads out by itself to cruise the ocean in accordance with the navigation instructions — realizing how far to go down within the water column, when to pattern, and when to floor and ship a locator sign so it may be retrieved.

Because the drone exams have been underway, the US analysis vessel Sikuliaq, owned by the Nationwide Science Basis and operated by the college, performed its personal two-week mission within the gulf to take carbon and pH samples as a part of ongoing work every spring, summer time and fall.

These strategies are restricted to amassing samples from a hard and fast level whereas the glider will be capable of roam all around the ocean and supply researchers with a wealth of information on the ocean’s chemical make-up.

The imaginative and prescient is to in the future have a fleet of robotic gliders working in oceans throughout the globe, offering a real-time glimpse of present circumstances and a strategy to higher predict the longer term.

“We are able to … perceive far more about what’s occurring within the ocean than we’ve got been earlier than,” McDonnell mentioned.