Ron Allum Deepsea Services (RADS) is proud to announce that on 8-9 December 2021 the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology(SOEST) at the University of Hawai’i successfully tested the RADS’s designedHadal Water Column Profiler (HWCP) to 1956m Depth.  The HWCP is a multidisciplinary 11km depthrated free-falling profiler which measures vertical profiles of turbulentmicrostructure (mixing), temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen,horizontal velocity and 200 kHz bioacoustics backscatter.  It also records video and has a small 11 bottle water sampler.  Even for 11km depths, the HWCP is capable of several profiles a day.

The HWCP was trialled off the coast of Hawai’i from the RVMoana.  Four casts were tethered so that SOEST could confirm the operation of the drop weight release logic.  The final four casts were untethered, as theinstrument is designed to be deployed, including one at night to 1965m depth.

The HWCP design and build is the result of a highly successful collaboration between a team of scientists, engineers and technicians from the SOEST, RADS who provided the vehicle design, structure andfloatation and pressure tolerant batteries and Rockland Scientific International who provided the custom turbulent microstructure instrumentation.

To minimise the possibility of at-sea loss SOEST worked with RADS to develop multiple redundant ballast releases.

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