The team deploys autonomous vessel,Waveglider to facilitate datacollectionandanalyses. 39 Who’s Minding the Planet? INTERNATIONAL WATERS Inger has worked in ocean related businesses for 15 years in research and development, systems integration and business development roles. She also holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering. Inger M. Graves | Ocean & Coastal Business Development lead at Xylem "We are able to utilize three different autonomous vessels to map the ecosystem." Inger: Sure, I'd love to! Traditionally scientists have used large research vessels for ocean research and monitoring projects – complete with a full crew of people. But you can only map so much of the ocean due to the cost of these efforts and the amount of resources available. In terms of data collection in the ocean, these traditional methods result in low spatial and temporal coverage for data collection. Autonomous, unmanned vessels are an up-and-coming technology that is accepted more and more these days as a powerful tool for oceanographic research. These self-sustaining vessels can monitor the ocean for months at a time, and have many advantages over traditional approaches to monitoring – the biggest of which is the sheer amount of data that they can collect on their own. Hi Inger! Would you introduce us to the GLIDER Project and the autonomous vehicle Aanderaa has been working on? They provide exponentially more information to scientists than was possible even a decade ago.They can also measure conditions in places that larger, manned ships simply cannot. The GLIDER Project came about with the desire to utilize these autonomous ocean vessels off the Norwegian coast where there was great interest in better understanding the local eco-system. Aanderaa is collaborating with a research consortium financed by the Research Council of Norway and ConocoPhillips.We are working with a number of organizations – including Norwegian government agencies, academia and industry – to shed more light on ecologically vulnerable areas critical to the fishing industry.These places are incredibly important to the country’s economy since the Viking age. We are investigating areas where cod migrations spawn and the interplay between plankton, the cod, marine mammals and the environment at large.