The SALPs are coming back to life!

We have been refurbishing three Submerged Autonomous Launch Platforms (SALPs) in order to autonomously deploy surface drifters and profiling floats over the course of months. The SALPs consist of a steel-frame cylinder about ~1 m in diameter and ~2 m high that store drifters and/or floats at a fixed mooring site and release the drifters/floats according to real-time conditions. Special thanks goes to Amy Bower for lending us the SALPs and Jim Valdes for rebuilding them. Final assembly and testing with surface drifters from Seascan, Inc will be done in winter 2022. Graphic of SALP from Fratantoni et al. (2014).