today one hundred miles off the coast of texas a 10-foot-long yellow autonomous glider is riding waves as it patrols the perimeter above the noaa flower garden banks national marine sanctuary it is collecting water quality data related to ocean acidification which is essential to monitoring the long-term survival of the sanctuarys unique coral reef ecosystem and transmitting it to a research team that includes texas a&m university system scientists the texas a&m liquid robotics waveglider sv3s 90-day deployment the first of its kind in the us is part of a multi-institutional collaborative project funded by noaas oceanic and atmospheric research office ocean acidification program (oap) project partners include the harte research institute for gulf of mexico studies at texas a&m university-corpus christi texas a&m universitys geochemical and environmental research group (gerg) the gulf of mexico coastal ocean observing system (gcoos) liquid robotics and the flower garden banks national marine sanctuary but the wavegliders mission has been bumpier than expected it has survived two named hurricanes ida and nicholas since texas a&m gerg scientists deployed it into the gulf of mexico aug 13 the waveglider was riding 16-foot (5-meter) swells after hurricane nicholas said dr steve dimarco professor of oceanography at texas a&m and team leader for ocean observing at texas a&m gerg those are not seas where we want to put a research vessel loaded with scientists and students so thats one reason why this autonomous glider is perfect for this mission its the first long-term operational monitoring of a coral reef in us waters using an autonomous surface vehicle (asv) this feat shows the important role that autonomous systems can play in collecting invaluable ocean data even in the face of extreme weather events the research team said the principal investigator leading the project is dr xinping hu chair for ecosystem science and modeling at the harte research institute and associate professor in the department of physical and environmental sciences at texas a&m university-corpus christi our lab has been working with the flower garden banks national marine sanctuary since 2013 collecting seawater carbonate data hu said but sample collections have been mostly on a seasonal basis and rely on the sanctuarys research vessel the r/v manta the waveglider offers an excellent opportunity for us to continuously monitor this area for an extended period of time with unprecedented temporal resolution we cant wait to see what the on-board sensors will reveal for the entire deployment researchers work together to protect marine sanctuary this groundbreaking work is being made possible through collaborations with several partners dimarco is co-leading the research while dr kerri whilden gerg assistant research scientist and gcoos oceanographer is leading at-sea logistics sensor integration deployment and recovery operations liquid robotics technicians are remotely piloting the asv the waveglider mission support is provided by the gcoos glider-piloting dashboard and data portal known as gandalf in addition to providing real-time vehicle positioning information gandalf can show data layers that can be individually displayed on the base map including visible and infrared satellite images sea surface temperature and chlorophyll images sea surface heights and navigational charts