ICYCLER - Energy-Conserving Under-Ice Moored Profiler

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ICYCLER

- Energy-Conserving Under-Ice Moored Profiler

ICYCLER is a new instrument platform developed at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (BIO) to measure surface-layer water properties under mobile ice. ICYCLER is sold by ODIM Brooke Ocean under license.

ICYCLER was created to respond to the requirement for daily recovery of oceanographic data from water immediately beneath ridged ice to quantify fresh water flow from the Arctic Ocean to the North West Atlantic. The instrument was designed for autonomous year-long operation under ice cover in the channels of Canada’s Arctic Archipelago.

The ICYCLER hides at a depth of 50 metres until sampling is initiated. It uses an underwater winching system and an echo-sounder to move through the upper water column to within 2 metres of the ice or the open-water surface.

The system consists of a small, streamlined float carrying a CTD and a fluorometer, a unique, energy-conserving winch packaged in a streamlined mid-water float, a built-in echo sounder and controller and data storage equipment. These can be identified in the image to the right, as well as the standard mooring components.

Recently, the ICYCLER recovered 350, 50-metre deep CTD and chlorophyll concentration profiles in a 350-day deployment in the Barrow Strait. The image to the left shows this data plotted graphically.

ICYCLER does not require a huge battery reserve because it employs a two-float, differential bouyancy system that conserves power by storing the energy gained from the ascent phase and using it to power the descent.

The animation to the right shows the motion of the ICYCLER in operation. As the echo sounder identifies an object in its path (in this case, the ice), the winch reverses direction and draws the instrument float back down toward the winch float.

This movement through the water column and its proximity-sensing capability also makes ICYCLER an ideal gateway buoy.

Photo of ICYCLER mid-water float with fairing removed

Photo of ICYCLER mid-water float with fairing removed

The photo to the left shows the internal structure of the mid-water float.

A consortium made up of researchers from Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, University of Bremen, IFM-Geomar (Germany), the National Oceanography Center (Southampton) and ODIM Brooke Ocean are SeaCYCLER equipped with telemetry float

currently working to develop a new open-ocean winched profiler based on the ICYCLER design to measure carbon fluxes across the air-sea interface in the upper layer (150 m) of the open ocean. This system, named SeaCYCLER, will be instrumented with additional sensors and will incorporate a satellite telemetry system. This project is funded jointly by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans / Bedford Institute of Oceanography and the European FP6 CarboOcean project.

For more information on the ICYCLER or the SeaCYCLER open-water variant and their particular applications, please contact ODIM Brooke Ocean.

ICYCLER was developed by the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Ocean Physics Division and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and is sold by ODIM Brooke Ocean under license. Visit the DFO ICYCLER website by clicking here.

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