Federal researchers lose pricey new submersible on first deployment

Researchers with Fisheries and Oceans Canada are hoping their fancy new oceanic surveying tool reappears, but there's been no sign of the submersible glider since July 28, and it's likely been lost.

The Slocum glider, manufactured by U.S. company Teledyne Marine, looks something like a two-metre yellow torpedo, but it's slow-moving and propelled by diving and rising in the ocean, rather than a propeller. It's outfitted with various high-tech sensors and equipment to take measurements in the ocean.

"Your first reaction is, you know, shit happened and it will report — you know, we'll get it next time," said Charles Hannah, a research scientist with DFO who heads up the program that deployed the glider. "You kind of get used to losing equipment in the ocean."

"There was absolutely no evidence that anything was wrong, until it didn't call home," said Hannah.

Perfect deployment

The missing glider was launched four days before it went missing more than 300 kilometres west of Vancouver Island.

Tammy Norgard, DFO program head for the large offshore marine protection program and her team were on a research mission gathering data on seamounts — mountains submerged entirely beneath the surface of the sea. They launched the glider for Hannah's team and planned to get some data for their own project, before it was set to bear west out into the North Pacific.

"We had to stay beside it for — I think we were out there for about three hours," said Norgard, adding that the gliders are pretty new to Canada's Pacific region and that she had never worked with one before.

"There's quite a procedure, quite a long procedure that we followed."

Norgard's team soon left the area and only heard much later that the Slocum was missing in action.

'It's a risk that we take'

"I was feeling really bad for them, because it's a big deal to put this out and these things happen," she said.

"We send a lot of high-tech, fancy units into the ocean. I mean, it's a risk that we take."

It's unclear exactly what the glider cost — they're outfitted with a wide range of sensors and Teledyne Marine didn't reply to requests for comment by CBC News.

It's believed to cost about $150,000 to $200,000, though the instrument package was pretty basic, with sensors to measure temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen tools to detect phytoplankton, according to Hannah.

"I know it's more than $50,000 and less than $1 million but where it fits in there I don't know," said Hannah.

A federal government procurement notice appears to show Teledyne was awarded a contract for two gliders bound for Victoria at a cost of $450,400.

The second new glider hasn't been deployed, according to Hannah, due to the discovery of a slow leak.

"We're just getting started and it's a new thing, so it's annoying and frustrating, because we have plans and we have to put those on hold, but there's not much you can do," he said.

• Unmanned gliders to help DFO measure and monitor oceans
• MUN's underwater robot still on the missing list
• Yellow robot lost off coast of Newfoundland

Mystery abounds

Hannah and his team have spent weeks wondering what happened to the glider.

"There's lots of speculation about what happened, you know, why did we lose it?" he said. "Did it come to the surface and get hit by a ship?"

They've considered explanations like animal attacks, but Hannah doesn't know how seriously to take the idea.

"The scenario that gives us the most hope is that it came up and got caught under something," said Hannah, saying there still should be some battery power left in the glider, and if a storm knocks it loose, it could make contact via satellite.

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