Del Mar Oceanographic, RBR Ink Deal

Del Mar Oceanographic (DMO) and RBR signed a collaboration agreement for the provision of Wirewalkers with RBR CTDs and sensors in Australia and New Zealand.

The DMO Wirewalker, originally designed at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, is a field-proven vertically profiling instrument platform powered by ocean waves.  Attached to a free-drifting or moored buoy, the Wirewalker ratchets downward along a suspension wire under wave power. At a predetermined depth, the ratchet releases and the profiler then ascends at its terminal velocity (~0.5m/s), completely decoupled from sea-surface motion. A very clean data record is obtained to within one meter of the sea surface.

The combination of Wirewalker’s rapid profiling, simplicity, and robustness with high-accuracy, low-powered RBR loggers and realtime telemetry system, is designed to deliver an increase in vertical resolution and deploy for longer periods of time.