The Wire Flyer Towed Profiling System

Abstract

The Wire Flyer towed vehicle is a new platform able to collect high-resolution water column sections. The vehicle is motivated by a desire to effectively capture spatial structures at the submesoscale. The vehicle fills a niche that is not achieved by other existing towed and repeat profiling systems. The Wire Flyer profiles up and down along a ship-towed cable autonomously using controllable wings for propulsion. At ship speeds between 2 and 5 kt (1.02–2.55 m s−1), the vehicle is able to profile over prescribed depth bands down to 1000 m. The vehicle carries sensors for conductivity, temperature, depth, oxygen, turbidity, chlorophyll, pH, and oxidation reduction potential. During normal operations the vehicle is typically commanded to cover vertical regions between 300 and 400 m in height with profiles that repeat at kilometer spacing. The vertical profiling speed can be user specified up to 150 m min−1. The high-density sampling capability at depths below the upper few hundred meters makes the vehicle distinct from other systems. During operations an acoustic modem is used to communicate with the vehicle to provide status information, data samples, and the ability to modify the sampling pattern. This paper provides an overview of the vehicle system, describes its operation, and presents results from several cruises.

Ocean deoxygenation and zooplankton: Very small oxygen differences matter

“…S1). First, the Wire Flyer, a recently developed towed deepwater oscillating profiler ( 17 ), was deployed on ~50-km-long transects between depths of 325 to 650 m or 525 to 850 m with 1-km repeats to obtain high-resolution oxygen and environmental data for elucidating spatial and temporal variability of OMZ oxygen gradients and features. In contrast to other oscillating profilers that are generally limited to the upper few hundred meters of the water column, the Wire Flyer system incorporates a heavy clump weight (955 kg) that allows it to oscillate at programmable depth intervals to 1000 m at a ship speed of 4 knots.…”

“…Here, we describe observations and experiments undertaken during a 2017 research expedition in the eastern tropical North Pacific, one of the world’s major OMZs and an important fisheries and biodiversity region ( 16 ). A new approach for investigating submesoscale OMZ features, using integrated and targeted physical and biological sampling, was accomplished using a recently developed towed vertically oscillating hydrographic profiler (Wire Flyer) ( 17 ) to identify midwater oxygen features, followed by horizontal tows collecting sequential zooplankton samples through those features with a MOCNESS [Multiple Opening-Closing Net and Environmental Sensing System ( 18 )] (table S1). Wire Flyer transects sampled 325-m-thick midwater depth intervals for distances of ~50 km and revealed small persistent midwater oxygen anomalies a few kilometers wide.…”

High‐resolution measurements of the epipelagic and mesopelagic ocean by a profiling vehicle equipped with environmental sensors and a broadband echosounder

“…The Wire Flyer towed profiling system is able to provide rapid repeat profiling at high horizontal resolutions within a specified region of the water column (Roman et al 2019; Fig. 1).…”

“…Towed rapid profiling instruments (e.g., the underway CTD, Rudnick and Klinke 2007; SeaSoar, Pollard 1986; moving vessel profiler, Herman et al 1998; or Wire Flyer, Roman et al 2019) can resolve the appropriate spatiotemporal scales and simultaneously record a number of complimentary measurements at depth, making these systems desirable for ecosystem exploration in the pelagic environment. The towed systems are typically operated in a “tow‐yo” pattern, where the system is vertically profiled repetitiously while being towed horizontally with the ship, to produce the water column coverage necessary to evaluate vertical distributions and produce hydrographic sections of environmental data.…”

“…In this paper we describe integrating a dual frequency (70 and 200 kHz) echosounder into the Wire Flyer towed vehicle (Roman et al 2019). The system utilizes the EK80 miniWBT echo sounder in a similar manner as in Benoit‐Bird et al (2018), but on a higher speed profiling vehicle with side‐looking transducers.…”