“Blue is away!” With those words, engineers from SMAST’s Ocean Observation Lab launched their ocean glider “Blue” off Martha’s Vineyard on September 6, and a continental-scale observation experiment called Gliderpalooza got under way. A dozen or more gliders are following suit and will be plying the waters of the Atlantic seaboard from Nova Scotia to Georgia through late October.

Three East Coast regional associations of the US Integrated Ocean Observing System, along with the eastern Canadian ocean observation effort, are collaborating on the experiment. The North American Atlantic shelf waters are among the most seasonally variable in the world, and Gliderpalooza data will contribute toward understanding the physical regulation of the timing and extent of these dramatic seasonal shifts. Of particular interest is a seasonal feature termed “the Cold Pool,” a bottom-trapped, anomalously cool water mass expected to influence the distribution of fish species in the mid-Atlantic.

Ocean gliders operate by translating small changes in buoyancy into forward motion with each dive or surfacing, so the glider takes measurements along a serrated cross-section of the water column. At the surface, the glider exchanges information with “home base” via satellite phone. Track gliders here.