Royal NIOZ Acquires Three New Teledyne Webb Slocum Gliders

Teledyne Marine announces selling and delivering three Webb Slocum gliders to the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ). NIOZ conducts multidisciplinary applied marine research to address major scientific questions about our oceans and seas.

After completing a competitive tender procedure, NIOZ acquired three Teledyne Webb Research G3 Slocum gliders. NIOZ Scientists, engineers, and ship technicians recently underwent operational and maintenance training on the systems with field support staff from Teledyne Webb Research and the UK’s National Oceanographic Center (NOC), which are Teledyne’s European Slocum Service Center. This training was conducted in Spain at SOCIB facilities in preparation for the glider science project to be undertaken initially by the RV Pelagia in the North Sea in the spring of 2023.

On deck with Slocum Webb Gliders after successful sea trials.

The Nose project will study the absorption of CO2 in the North Sea. Slocum gliders were acquired with a grant from the NWO Large-scale Scientific Infrastructure (NWO-GWI), awarded in 2020 to a broad nationwide marine research consortium of universities, institutes, and TO2 institutions.

“After tendering, we opted for cooperation with Teledyne Webb Research in the United States of America. For us, the G3 Slocum Glider proved to be a flexible platform with long endurance and an acoustic data transfer capability.” Marck Smit, NIOZ Sea Research

Deploying a Teledyne Webb Research Slocum Glider

NWO-NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research is the national oceanographic institute. It principally performs academically excellent multidisciplinary fundamental and frontier applied marine research addressing important scientific and societal questions pertinent to the functioning of oceans and seas. NIOZ serves as a national marine research facilitator (NMF) for The Netherlands scientific community and stimulates and supports multidisciplinary fundamental and frontier applied marine research, education, and marine policy development in the national and international context.