A collaboration between Sonardyne, SeaTrac Systems and the University of Rhode Island has demonstrated a new method for collecting ocean current data in near-real time using uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) and seabed sensors.
The project gathered high-resolution current profiles from the Loop Current System in the US Gulf of Mexico, deploying four Sonardyne deepwater acoustic Doppler current profilers and five pressure inverted echo sounders in 1,800–3,200 m water depth roughly 200 nautical miles off Louisiana.
A SeaTrac SP-48 USV periodically harvested data acoustically using a Sonardyne transceiver and transmitted more than 135 GB of oceanographic data to shore via Iridium and Starlink links.
The work was funded by the US National Academies Gulf Research Program and was completed in autumn 2025, including three deployments covering more than 30 days. During autonomous operations the SP-48 covered around 1,500 nautical miles while holding station in currents, collecting profiles up to 800 m above the seabed
The partners say the results establish a scalable model for autonomous ocean observation that can improve forecasts of disruptive phenomena such as topographic Rossby waves and reduce risk to offshore infrastructure. The dataset will now be used to refine predictive models and promote broader adoption of autonomous monitoring.
