Sea Glider Shows Underwater Potential what it mean?

A strange-looking yellow "fish" has been lurking in the waters off the southern coast of Vancouver Island recently. Called a Slocum underwater glider, the 1.5-metre-long, 52-kilogram torpedo-shaped vehicle is under evaluation by the federal government’s Institute of

Ocean

Sciences (IOS). Driven entirely by a variable buoyancy system

instead

of a propeller, it needs no mother ship for tethering or support. The evaluation project is a formal collaboration between Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Canadian Centre for

Ocean

Gliders

(CCOG). The Slocum is not the first underwater glider, as they have been around

a

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for a

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while

now. Underwater

gliders

are called

gliders

because they literally glide through

water

much like a sailplane glides through the air under gravity. They are slowly succeeding propeller-driven, electricity-hungry craft to explore and monitor deep-sea conditions. Underwater

gliders

can propel themselves for months using only a trick of buoyancy. Apart from saving energy, these craft

also

endure better because there are no external moving parts like blades and wing flaps to gum up. And, as there is no propeller,

such

an undersea craft does not contaminate its environment with

lubricants

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the lubricants

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needed to smooth propeller motion. Matt Russi, an aerospace and

ocean

engineer at Virginia Tech developing internal controls suitable for

gliders

, points out that: “

Slocums

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Slocum

should not disturb the environment which they are sampling. For propeller-powered underwater vehicles,

this

might mean avoiding stirring up sediment on the

ocean

floor, which happens when a vehicle uses external thrusters. With

gliders

there is no exhaust, no discharge and no lubricants.” A colleague of Russi, Dr Rob Kirwan,

also

adds that “since there are no external actuators, the vehicles are robust to corrosion.” Traditional underwater

gliders

work by being buoyantly nearly neutral

while

near the

water

’s surface, so that they sink slowly down. If you want to go straight, just shift the weight forward to tilt the nose down a bit.

Then

to rise, electricity from a battery between the tail wings is used to pump

an

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oil contained inside central hull tanks next to the mid wings into external containment bladders behind the nose.

This

simple

manoeuver

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manoeuvre

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increases the craft’s volume

,

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and

thus

lowers its density just enough for the surrounding

water

to push it upward.

Although

this

is cutting-edge technology, it seems nature beat human engineers to it. Marine biologists were for a long time mystified by how dolphins could cross greater distances than their muscle power and oxygen intake should allow. Many researchers attributed

this

to an even skin coating that would reduce

water

friction, but new evidence points to gliding enabled by buoyancy changes when

water

pressure compresses air in the respiratory system. Science has often been criticised for not exploring the earth’s oceans as much as they should. With the Slocum Thermal glider’s range being 40,000 kilometres, it could theoretically circle the world. It is able to dive two kilometres under the surface and travel transmitting data for five years before returning to port. With technology like

this

, scientists might start to understand the

earth’s

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oceans properly.