Winter 2016: Dec 19, 2016 Snow atop Mauna Loa and Metis in ocean below. Wishing you all Happy Holidays and a Prosperous New Year!

Fall 2016: Nov 11, 2016 we had a Wave Glider deployed to see when we could hear the first male humpback whale singer. In previous years we have heard the early singer around mid November which held true for this year as well. However, this year while listening we heard something else pretty dramatic; what appears to be a shark biting off our hydrophone!! To hear what it sounded like click HERE.

 

Fall 2016: Our California team of scientist in collaboration with MBARI presented a paper on the use of our ocean’s microscope at the OCEANS’16 MTSIEEE Monterey Sep 19 to Sep 22.

 

Summer 2016: Acoustic testing for a localization project.

 

Winter 2016: “Papito”, our new crew member!

 

Spring 2015: The CA team has done the unimaginable: they have developed a compound bright-field microscope as a Wave Glider payload that collects in-situ water sampling of micro-organisms, takes date/time/geolocation stamped pictures, screens them, and sends these picture back to the lab in near real-time. Never been done off an autonomous vehicle! For more detail see Ocean Microscope.

 

Jan 2015 HAPPY NEW YEARS!: Jan 5th we started streaming LIVE humpbacks off of our Wave Glider Metis, and continue to do camera testing off of a WG with a much shorter tether. Enjoy the whales, they are spectacular right now.

Dec 2014: To finish off the year, we sent one of our WG’s, Karpo, on a 12nm offshore around the Big Island journey as part of a collaborative study with Cascadia Research and NOAA in search of pilot whales in an alleged “no pilot whale zone” off the East side of the BI off Hilo. Karpo was streaming mp3 audio as well as archiving large WAV files. We had it hold station for a few days in the no zone area as well as over Loihi Sea Mount. The mission took 23days. Data is being analyzed, so you will have to wait until 2015 for the results.

 

June-Oct, 2014: We spent several months developing and testing camera’s off the WG. We mounted 3 camera’s on the surface of the float, one looking down at the glider and 5 mounted below the glider. We have been successful at streaming in real time nearly several hundred pictures/hour via cell to a “test” web site. While the quality of the camera’s, thus the pictures, are limited by our bandwidth capacity, they are useful. The one looking down at the glider is mostly for diagnostic reasons, the others are to test… “if you could take pictures every 6 seconds in the ocean, what might you see?” Well… the answer is “a whole lot of blue water”, however we did capture schooling fish, melon headed whales, spinner dolphins, sharks, boats, barges, birds, and airplanes. Below are just a few examples.

 

April, 2014: From Jan 9th to April 24th, for the first year ever, we primarily streamed the humpback whale song from our Wave Gliders. This enabled us to be in deeper waters with steep ledges where we heard some amazing songs with echoes and whales from near and far. We hope you enjoyed the season like a breaching whale!

 

February, 2014: Whale season has been going strong and keeping us busy. Beth presents at Whale Tales Maui 2014 as cows and calves frolic in Paradise.

Jan 30, 2014: Wave Glider and Snow-Capped Mauna Kea

Jan 9, 2014: We are now officially broadcasting our LIVE Song from our Wave Gliders. Today we deployed and sure enough two whales came right by!

 

 

 

Dec 31, 2013: HAPPY NEW YEARS! We are broadcasting LIVE Humpback whales off our moored Cetabuoy.

 

April 2013: On April Fools day we were out doing an inspection on Wave Glider Thebe as well testing cell reception on WG Callisto when a lone whale approached May Maru from the rear, dove under the boat and came up on each side of the vessel. It dove for ~17 minutes right by the boat, we immediately started hearing a very loud song, much closer than previous streaming. As we proceeded with our operations, it followed us around swimming by the boat and then diving, each time we could hear the song ever so present. We recorded the song, the whale was ~.36nm from WG Thebe. Could it have been a lonely male whale looking for a female or another male companion? The whales have been heading back up North for a few weeks now. We called the presumed male the Lone Ranger. The audio is 5min 21s, towards the last 1.5min we may be hearing sounds the whale makes just before surfacing. The entire 5:21 audio is very interesting. Movie just repeats itself showing the whale coming near the boat on all sides and fluking. Click here for movie and audio.

Lone Ranger:

March 2013: Last year we made a home-style mini documentary movie on how Jupiter began, helped develop the Wave Glider and launched Liquid Robotics Inc. At the premier showing, we invited over 120 VIP guest from the local community that have either had a direct hand or watched our development over the past 10 years.

Joe gives an introduction to the film:

Dinner and wine before the film:

February 2013: In collaboration with acousticians and students from Cornell University and marine biologist from Hawaii Marine Mammal Consortium, we conducted a “proof of concept” test using 3 Wave Gliders equipped with hydrophones to triangulate on a singing humpback whale off the Kohala Coast. The data are still being analyzed, but the preliminary results of being able to identify bearing and distance of a whale or other audible targets appear to be very promising. More test to come.

We loaded up 3 WG’s on May Maru:

Under water view of WG equipped with hydrophone:

We ended up performing the test in gale force winds, a testament to the WG’s, students and May Maru!

WG’s hydrophone array holding station on a linear and triangular pattern:

WG’s transverse from inshore to offshore stations:

January 2013: We’re off to a good start in 2013 streaming whale songs from our Wave Glider. Being able to stream from a Wave Glider vs a moored buoy has given us more flexibility such as being further off shore (~5.5nm) and in deeper water, producing a much richer sound.

Conducting sound abatement on our Wave Glider from the May Maru:

Whales swimming in vicinity of the Wave Glider:

Birds hover about as well: