TideRider: A Low-Cost Coastal Profiling Float

Coastal ecosystem stressors such as hypoxia, marine heatwaves and harmful algal blooms require new technologies to properly monitor and predict. Instrumented buoys, gliders, profiling floats, and shore stations are all applicable to the coastal domain, but all face certain limitations that prevent deployment in large numbers. We designed TideRider, easy to build, $1600 profiling floats intended primarily for coastal water quality monitoring.TideRiders profile between the surface and seafloor, resting on the seafloor between profiles. By timing ascents and descents, it is possible to opportunistically harness ambient currents to move the devices in a controlled way, e.g., toward a waypoint, or to hold station as a "virtual mooring." This capability was demonstrated in a series of field tests in summer 2022.