Gliding into Teamwork

Picking up the "F1 cars" of oceanography requires flexibility.

The Perfect Pickup

The call comes in. An ocean glider named Eva—a torpedo-shaped autonomous vehicle that scientists use to measure ocean conditions offshore—is low on batteries and ready for a pickup. Operators 500 kilometers to the south remotely drive Eva eastward, dialing up her power usage a smidge to gain enough thrust to maneuver the more volatile shallow waters of Hakai Passage on the British Columbia Central Coast.

It’s a 15-minute sheltered boat ride for Chris Mackenzie and the Hakai Institute oceanography team up the calm waters of Kwakshua Channel to reach Fitz Hugh Sound. The ocean swell is barely noticeable and only a few choppy wind waves lap against the hull. An hour after the initial call, Eva is safe and sound on the boat and on her way back to the research station.

Ocean gliders travel thousands of kilometers on one battery charge. While efficient enough to stay at sea for a couple of weeks at a time, they do eventually run out of batteries and need to come to shore to recharge and get a tune-up. Like a (slightly slower) Formula 1 pit crew, the oceanography team goes through a laundry list of maintenance after each pickup.

“We rinse it all off and then charge the glider overnight,” says Mackenzie, a Hakai Institute technician. “Five or six hours to download the data, which then gets pushed to a server in Victoria. It’s amazing. They can put updates online almost in real time.”

The gliders off Calvert Island are part of a fleet that plies the underwater canyons out to the continental shelf offshore. The fleet is part of the Canadian-Pacific Robotic Ocean Observing Facility (C-PROOF), a collaborative effort between the University of Victoria, the University of British Columbia, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), and the Hakai Institute.

One day before they’re set to fly out, the team whips over to Fitz Hugh Sound again to drop off Eva for another mission, now rinsed, recharged, and ready for action at sea again. Mission complete. Or at least that’s how things are supposed to go.

The Gardener Goes Offshore

A distress signal comes in on a Sunday night in early September. Ocean glider WALL-E—named after Pixar’s fervent animated robot—ran out of batteries earlier than expected and is floating 25 kilometers off Calvert Island. The glider has to wait it out, bobbing in the open Pacific Ocean until his ride home arrives. That could be days, especially since the main research season has already wound down. But WALL-E is lucky.

Hours after the distress signal comes in, the only six people on Calvert Island sit down for lunch in the main lodge. Technician Jon Bergshoeff is the only one there certified to drive a boat. He can’t pick up a glider by himself, and no one else is scheduled to arrive for four days. There’s a sense of urgency, as the forecast predicts weather conditions are going to get worse before they get better. Bergshoeff surveys the table.

“Anyone interested in going on a little boat ride?” he asks.

Paige Wagner came to work for the Hakai Institute to work in the gardens, occasionally picking up housekeeping and other duties. It’s somewhat of an unspoken tradition at the Hakai Institute, though, that you might get pulled into a project you weren’t initially hired to do—often completely different from your day job.

“I’m not a boat person per se,” says Wagner. “But if you need help, I’ll do it. Also the bugs are currently horrendous, so any chance to not get eaten for an hour, I’m taking it.”

So Wagner swaps her garden fork and bug net for a floater coat. With a short window of decent weather, the pair depart. Bergshoeff asks Wagner if she’s ever been seasick as they slowly make their way west into the open Pacific Ocean to WALL-E’s last known location. If you head straight west, you won’t hit another landmass until Japan.

“Jon, until you say you’re afraid, I trust you,” says Wagner. “I know nothing about this machine. All I know is that it’s important.”

As they look back toward shore an hour later, the ridge of Mount Buxton—the highest point on Calvert Island—isn’t quite as prominent as usual. Bergshoeff calls WALL-E’s pilot, James Pegg from DFO on the satellite phone to get the glider’s last known location. Within five minutes, Wagner spots WALL-E’s tail bobbing like a cork. As a team, they wrangle WALL-E aboard, careful not to break off any delicate parts. 

“It was awesome,” says Wagner. “We saw whales on the way home. Everything went without a hiccup.”

While WALL-E found himself critically low on battery offshore, months later his glider buddy Marvin will run into a different challenge.

The Detour

It’s January, and there’s still a skeleton crew at the ecological observatory on Calvert Island. The oceanography team comes in every few weeks to make sure data can be collected year-round, and as luck would have it, it’s their week on duty when yet another weekend glider call leads to a quick change of plans. This time the culprit in trouble is Marvin. 

“We’re always worried about losing them, especially if they run out of batteries, especially in winter,” says Jody Klymak, the principal investigator at C-PROOF. “These gliders aren’t disposable. They’re over a quarter million dollars each. So we do what we have to.”

On his way back from a mission to the continental shelf in Queen Charlotte Sound, strong currents pushed Marvin far off course to the northeast. Making it back to Hakai Passage wasn’t in the cards. So Chris Mackenzie and the oceanography team decide to reroute up a sheltered passage to a spot near Bella Bella where they can meet the wayward Marvin.

“Once the oceanography sensors stop working, you basically just have an expensive satellite phone,” says Mackenzie, a technician with the Hakai Institute, who adds that the ocean can be a particularly harsh place for scientific instruments. And that tension makes retrieving a distressed glider all that more rewarding. 

“It’s an unspoken competition to see who can spot [the glider] first,” says Mackenzie. “Less than a quarter of the glider is exposed above the surface. Sometimes, you have to search for a while before you find it.”

Deploying and retrieving ocean gliders is a key part of the effort. Partners like the Hakai Institute are critical to that step, but also have a vested interest as one of the numerous users of the data the gliders collect for various research projects.

“Winter collections are a big deal,” says Klymak. “It gives you a sense of the annual cycle. We get to see critical transitions between the seasons in a part of the ocean that’s important for biological productivity when lots of nutrients are mixed from the deep into the shallow, sunlit water.”

So far the gliders have all come home from their journeys offshore. A few are worse for wear and need to be sent out for extensive repairs. But they’ll be back soon enough to head out to sea once again. And a nimble Hakai Institute team will be poised to pick them back up, wherever that may be.