Saildrone Launches 72-Foot Autonomous Seabed Mapping Boat

Charting the ocean’s depths is a critically important undertaking, supporting numerous endeavors such as maritime transport, safeguarding coastlines, and the extraction of deep-sea resources. However, this process is notably expensive and lengthy, often presenting significant challenges and risks to personnel. Saildrone is an innovative company specializing in the development of self-directed exploration vehicles designed to perform extensive mapping operations while minimizing environmental disturbance and eliminating the need for an onboard crew.

Saildrone’s latest robotic ocean-going platform is the Surveyor, the company’s largest craft, measuring 72 feet in length. The Surveyor is capable of continuous operation at sea for up to a year, and it obtains its energy from both wind power (utilizing a substantial sail-like structure that functions differently than a traditional sailboat’s sail) and solar energy (through the solar panels positioned across its upper surfaces). The vessel is equipped with sonar technology capable of mapping the seafloor down to 7,000 meters – approximately 22,000 feet. While this doesn't reach the extreme depths of the ocean’s deepest points, it is sufficient for mapping the majority of the ocean floor, which averages around 12,100 feet in depth.

According to Saildrone, only approximately 20% of the Earth’s oceans have been mapped to date – indicating that our knowledge of the oceans is less comprehensive than our understanding of the surfaces of Mars or the Moon. Saildrone has already been instrumental in enhancing our knowledge of this largely unexplored realm with its 23-foot Explorer model, which has already logged 500,000 nautical miles during its independent ocean journeys. This larger vessel will contribute to both seafloor mapping and a new initiative focused on collecting DNA samples, utilizing sensors created by the University of New Hampshire and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, to gain a deeper understanding of the genetic diversity of marine life throughout the world’s oceans.