After a successful cold soak of over 24 hours, the Auto Release unit returned to the surface from 415 feet underwater in the area west of Kelvin Grove.
Placement on the drop and recovery is guided by the use of custom high resolution bottom maps.

The unit assembly returned within 30 seconds of the programmed time and within 15 feet of the drop location. Noting accent time is in the range of 100 feet/minute, making the trip back up over 4 minutes.The white tube holding the flag marker was the pressure housing of the ocean current monitor, which also passed the 24 hour cold soak deep test (Note both units have been pressure tested at depths up to 800 feet).

This places us a step closer to gathering data on deep ocean currents, near and around glass sponge bioherms.

This project is ongoing at 5 different sites in Howe Sound.  The process of data recovery will continue over the next 5 years to collect continuous time series of temperature data. Future data analysis will examine relationships between bottom temperature and other physical data (e.g. surface temperature, flow rates, sponge growth rates and live sponge coverage) in collaboration with the Vancouver Aquarium and academic partnerships.

Please help us with donations to continue our sponge research program 🙂