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Featured image: Glider Pilot

March 25, 2019

After a journey of more than two months from Miami, a team recovers a Spray glider on the continental shelf southeast of Cape Cod in June 2015. By changing its buoyancy, the glider flies along a sawtooth path through the upper kilometer (0.6 mile) of the ocean, collecting measurements of temperature, salinity, and currents. WHOI scientist Robert Todd (blue life jacket) navigated the glider back and forth across the Gulf Stream as part of a pilot program sponsored by Eastman Chemical Co. to demonstrate that gliders can be used to routinely monitor this key component of the Earth’s climate system along the East Coast. The success of the pilot program has since led to 20 similar glider missions that have collectively crossed the Gulf Stream more than 150 times to date. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)