High Resolution Spatiotemporal Time Series of Water Column Structure Data Acquired with Autonomous Operated Profiling CTD Mounted on a Viking Met-Ocean Buoy in Support of Autonomous Vehicle Test Area

A 2-meter (79 in) diameter and 4.5-meter (180 in) tall Viking buoy, built by the Canadian company MTE Instruments, served as offshore platform in the operation of an RBR Concerto CTD connected to an autonomously operated profiling winch. The CTD was attached to MTE Instrument's Mini Winch to record time series data of the water column's physical properties from surface to seafloor at 20m depth in support of an autonomous vehicle test area. Data acquisition and power management of the winch were handled by the main buoy controller. Meteorological and oceanographic sea state conditions for operation of the winch were monitored in real time by the winch and buoy controllers to ensure safe deployment and recovery of the CTD into the water from its in-hull storage tube, thus avoiding entanglement with the anchor chain. Storage of the CTD in a hull mounted tube above the water line kept the CTD sensors from biofouling. Full time series data were stored on the buoy and data snippets were transmitted to shore in near real time via iridium data burst. These data were subsequently quality controlled and are publicly available from NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration) NDBC (National Data Buoy Center) data servers. Here we report on the autonomously collected CTD and ADCP (Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler) data collected during that deployment.