Abstract
Underwater gliders are autonomous robots that follow a slow, see-saw path and may be deployed for months on end. Gliders have a dramatically lower payload capacity than research vessels and are thus limited to more simple instrumentation. They have the advantage, however, of being deployable for long periods of time without the high running costs of a ship. Recent years have seen development of the use of gliders to undertake acoustic surveys of biomass in the pelagic environment, highlighting their potential to fill future survey gaps. Here it is shown, using simulation of sampling, that gliders can resolve acoustic targets at greater resolutions than ships, due to their diving pattern, but that survey accuracy is strongly dependent on the speed of the target.
Highlights
Underwater gliders are a class of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV), are self-contained, battery powered vehicles and use small changes in their buoyancy to affect a vertical movement
The simulation presented demonstrates the potential for a glider to observe acoustically the pelagic ecosystem at resolutions greater than those typical of research vessels
Resolution and aliasing of glider-based acoustic surveys detail in structure has the potential to improve our understanding of swarming behavior and swarm size with respect to pressures such as fishing and environmental change [6,40,42]
Summary
Underwater gliders are a class of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV), are self-contained, battery powered vehicles and use small changes in their buoyancy to affect a vertical movement. Gliders travel in a highly energy-efficient seesaw pattern, as deep as 1000 m, with deeper models in development [3]. A glider will cover approximately 20 km in one day, travelling at a typical speed of 0.25 ms-1, while diving to depths of 1000 m. The efficient motion and limited power budget of a glider allows for deployments that may have an endurance of months. Gliders with a low-power, integrated and calibrated echo-sounder already been deployed to make measurements of acoustic backscatter[4,5]
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