Brooke Ocean Technology Limited (BOT) has signed a license agreement with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to commercialize the newly-developed under-ice instrumented profiler, the ICYCLER.

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 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.

Most recently, the ICYCLER recovered 350, 50-metre deep CTD and chlorophyll concentration profiles in a 350-day deployment in the Barrow Strait.

Researchers from Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, University of Bremen, IFM-Geomar (Germany) and the National Oceanography Center (Southampton) are 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 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.

BOT is a Canadian-based manufacturer of sensor platforms, instrumentation, cable handling systems and launch and recovery systems.