Talisker (Seaglider 156) Mission 003: Celtic Sea (FASTNEt) 15 September 2012 to 09 January 2013. A winter survey of the Celtic Sea shelf break

Talisker (SAMS Seaglider 156) was deployed in the Celtic Sea on 15 September 2012, to undertake a survey of the shelf edge as part of the FASTNEt project. The study site was surveyed by gliders from SAMS and MARS (Marine Autonomous and Robotic Systems at NOC) from June 2012 through to January 2013. Talisker was equipped with an unpumped Seabird CT sail, a SBE43f and an Aanderaa Optode oxygen sensors, as well as a Wetlabs fluorometer with red and blue backscatter sensors. In order to maximise the CTD sampling the fluorometer was turned for the whole mission, and due to a malfunction of the optode oxygen data was only collected for a few days at the start of the mission. Before recovery on 9 January 2013 Talisker had completed 1130 dives and covered over 1970 km. Unlike the previous missions, she was recovered as planned in January. The mission has been overall successful, on its own and as part of the 7-months long glider fleet survey.
The complete mission data can be visualised at http://velocity.sams.ac.uk/sg156/mission3/ and the full dataset can be obtained from the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC, http://www.bodc.ac.uk/).