This Is the Digital Ocean

The UK government used Wave Gliders to crack down on illegal fishing in some of the remotest waters on the planet.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in the United Kingdom had a massive challenge: How to protect 840,000 square kilometers of remote marine habitat without incurring the expense and risk of manned missions.

Working in conjunction with The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Satellite Applications Catapult’s new monitoring platform, “Project Eyes on the Seas,” the FCO enlisted the help of our Wave Glider platform to cost-effectively patrol the waters around the Pitcairn Islands, while high-cost assets, such as ships, planes, and other resources, focus on interdiction.

Japan’s Coast Guard is using Wave Gliders to detect tsunamis and improve emergency readiness.

The Japan Coast Guard is launching their first ocean observation network, providing comprehensive and economical monitoring of ocean conditions. As one of the countries most affected by natural disasters, Japan’s ultimate goal is to ensure the safety of those in and around the sea.

A fleet of eight Wave Gliders will help bring this vision to life, providing autonomous observation and situational awareness of ocean currents, wave activity, and weather along Japan’s coastlines. Helping make early tsunami warnings and better emergency readiness possible.

Pioneering a new kind of network for surveillance systems with Boeing.

Boeing is building the ultimate seafloor-to-space network. But getting real-time surveillance data is a challenge, in particular how to harvest subsea data and communicate it back to shore. Buoys can be unreliable and expensive to maintain, and it would be prohibitively expensive to have manned boats holding station 24/7.

The Wave Glider platform provides an essential link between space and the sea, collecting and communicating data over months and years. Persistent, highly durable, and unmanned, it can serve as a key building block in the maritime sensor network.

Wave Gliders are helping researchers track threatened fish populations along the eastern seaboard.

Scientists from Stanford, Duke, and Eastern Carolina University are working together to monitor tagged bluefin tuna, striped bass, and sturgeon off the Carolina coast. The value in tracking these species goes beyond learning about their migrations and behavior. It can also help us understand how climate change is impacting our oceans, based on the presence or absence of these fish in different ocean conditions.

But the rough winter conditions of the Hatteras coastline pose a unique challenge—that’s where Liquid Robotics comes in. Unmanned and able to withstand severe weather conditions for long durations, the Wave Glider helps fill a critical gap in how we can monitor these fish.