Del Mar Oceanographic Wirewalker Profiler

Del Mar Oceanographic’s wave-powered profiling system

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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 RBRfermatabattery canister to extend deployments by a factor of 20 and provide power for inductive telemetry to the surface.

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