Glider lab marks a milestone with 'Glide 365' project

Jeff Richardson
907-474-5350
November 19, 2025

Autonomous underwater vehicles are lined up outside the glider lab at the Seward Marine Center.
Autonomous underwater vehicles are lined up outside the glider lab at the Seward Marine Center. Photo by Hank Statscewich.

A trio of CFOS autonomous underwater vehicles marked an unprecedented milestone in 2025: An entire year of nonstop oceanographic sampling in the Gulf of Alaska.

The project, called Glide 365, proved that autonomous gliders could conduct a years worth of continuous data collection in the often-brutal conditions along the Gulfs outer continental shelf. Notoriously rough seas in the Gulf of Alaska common from September to April can be prohibitive for traditional ship-based oceanographic data collections.

With hourly profiles from the surface to the seafloor, we sampled right through 30-to-40-foot seas and storm force winds, said Hank Statscewich, who runs the UAF oceans glider lab. The resulting dataset is a first-ever compilation of the outer shelfs seasonal hydrography.  

Such high-resolution oceanographic data is important for studies of the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem, which supports some of the nations most productive fisheries. Phytoplankton blooms support the regions food web, and information about ocean and ecosystem conditions helps the North Pacific Fishery Management Council set catch limits.

Glide 365 gliders were deployed from the R/V Nanuq near Seward, then traveled about 100 miles to an instrumented oceanographic mooring on the outer shelf. The gliders and stationary mooring collect complementary data at the site: the glider can gather data right up to the surface as the mooring collects water samples, sediment samples and acoustic data.

CFOS Professor Seth Danielson, who is leading the monitoring effort, said Glide 365 provided invaluable new data about seasonal transitions in the Gulf of Alaska. The project eventually outshot its yearlong target, with continuous monitoring from March 2024 to May 2025.

Using gliders is really the ticket for near-real-time data delivery, Danielson said. We get updated measurements every few hours and can use that information to guide ship sampling efforts.

The uninterrupted coverage was made possible with a team of eight UAF glider pilots and three gliders named Shackleton, Turbo and Blinky, each with their own data-collecting niche.

The effort was accomplished with funding from the Alaska Ocean Observing System, vessel support from NSFs Northern Gulf of Alaska Long-Term Ecological Research program, and a federal appropriation secured by Sen. Lisa Murkowski.