Del Mar Oceanographic Wirewalker Profiler
Del Mar Oceanographic’s wave-powered profiling system
The Del Mar Oceanographic (DMO) Wirewalker is a vertically profiling instrument-platform powered by ocean waves. Through the Wirewalker’s rapid profiling and ability to integrate a wide variety of sensor payloads, it brings new life to typical one-dimensional sensor time-series as a 2-D depth-time image where an enormous increase in information and intuition is achieved.
Attached to a free-drifting or moored buoy, the Wirewalker ratchets downward along a suspension wire under wave power. At a predetermined depth (up to ~1000 m), the ratchet releases. The profiler then scends at its terminal velocity (~0.5 m/s), completely decoupled from sea-surface motion. A very clean data record is obtained to within 1 meter of the sea surface.
Key Features
- Rapid Vertical Profiling – Powered by Ocean waves
- Standard 300 m depth profiling – available up to 1000 m
- Deploy with any RBRconcerto3 or RBRmaestro3
- Custom sensor configuration
- Moored and drifting deployments possible
- System designed for efficiency and ease-of-use
- Up to 16 Hz profiling data to the surface
The Wirewalker is designed to be simple in operation, robust, and highly use-configurable. By transforming energy from the surface wave field to vehicle profiling motion, on-board batteries are used exclusively to power instrumentation.
The system’s free-ascend allows for the collection of high quality data from any fast-sampling oceanographic sensor and can provides data on conductivity, temperature and pressure observations, to optical, and ocean-current.
Optional Configurations
The DMO Wirewalker can be configured with up to ten channels of data, using either the RBRconcerto3 or RBRmaestro3 instruments. Add the RBRfermata3 battery canister to extend deployments by a factor of 20 and provide power for inductive telemetry to the surface.