Field Testing

While PAM equipped gliders have been extensively used for specific survey needs, they are also rapidly evolving and require extensive expertise for successful adoption to address additional survey needs. A fundamental requirement to developing a sustainable transition to operations plan for NOAA Fisheries necessarily includes a series of field tests.

Our field testing includes:

1. Local Sea Trials to field test individual gliders to ensure functionality

2. Glider Rodeo to assess the strengths and limitations of different PAM-Glider platforms and sensors

3. Concurrent Ship & Glider Surveys to collect data for developing advanced statistical methods to assess marine mammal populations using PAM-gliders and to better understand how these methods can augment shipboard surveys.