In waters South of Gran Canaria, technical staff from the U.S. company Teledyne Webb Research and the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands -PLOCAN- have carried out today, Tuesday 24 July, a new commissioning of the glider Silbo, after a refurbishment period at the facilities of PLOCAN in Taliarte.

Ahead, Silbo has a distance to sail of 2800 nautical miles that means in other words a mission period of about 200 days in operation across the Atlantic Ocean. Specifically, it’s expected that in about two months, Silbo reach the surrounding waters of Cape Verde archipelago, single point of land available over the planned transect.

Silbo’s main task is to circumnavigate the world's major oceans, into the "Challenger One" mission context.

In parallel, the launching of Silbo, overlaps with the 3rd edition of the International Summer School on Undewater Gliders, hosting this year for two weeks 14 students from different Europeans countries, among them a representative number from the Macaronesian archipelagos of Azores, Madeira and Cape Verde, which is closely related to several of the objectives of transnational cooperation projects such as MaReS, MACSIMAR and ESTRAMAR between the Macaronesian archipelagos for a common strategy on research and technological development in marine sciences, energy and climate change, with PLOCAN as partner.

In this context, PLOCAN as promoter of the Campus of International Excellence (CIE) and partner member in such projects acts as local coordinator of those activities related to underwater gliders technology.