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The Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands -PLOCAN- announces the 9th Glider School edition, a reference hands-on and training forum on ocean-gliders technology. It will be organized in the first week of October 2018 in Gran Canaria (Spain). Registration will open in the website http://www.gliderschool.eu on Friday 19th January.


Didactical contents will cover both hardware and software issues through theoretical and practical dedicated sessions in class, lab and open waters using real ocean-glider units by different technologies (Waveglider, Sailbuoy, Slocum, Seaglider and Seaexplorer), and focusing on ocean-glider features, capabilities and applications.


This highly specialized training week represents a great opportunity for students and professionals worldwide to learn about the main commercial ocean-glider technologies. After the 2017 edition, 107 students from 23 countries have been trained, representing the 5 continents.


The Glider School counts with the direct teaching-support from leading ocean-glider manufacturers, sensors and rest of modules that integrates these state-of-the-art unmanned autonomous ocean-observing platforms.


PLOCAN took part in the Sixth General Assembly of the Smart Submarine Robots Working in Co-operative Networks project (SWARMS) funded by the European Commission and the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and organised in the offices of Tecnalia in Bilbao.


Experts from the Macaronesia Network of Inter-regional and Multi-disciplinary Transfer of Knowledge and -Technologies for the protection, surveillance and monitoring of cetaceans in the marine environment and sustainably analyse and explore the associated tourism activity project (MARCET) took part in the MSM68-2 oceanographic campaign on the oceanographic vessel Maria S. Merian for 11 days, setting off from the port of Emden, Germany, heading for Mindelo, on the island of São Vicente, Cape Verde.

he European Logistic Efficiency and Naval Architecture for Wind Facilities with New Developments project (LEANWIND), funded by the 8th European Union framework programme to reduce the costs of deep-water off-shore wind farms and make them more competitive against fossil fuel-generated power came to an end in November 2017.

Launched in December 2013, the main objective of LEANWIND was to apply “lean” principles, developed by the car industry in Japan, to enhance efficiency and reduce costs in all stages of the life cycle of off-shore marine wind farm projects and their supply chain, and to develop cutting-edge tools and technology.

31 partners from Ireland, Norway, Spain, Denmark, France, United Kingdom, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, Germany and Turkey took part in a project that cost approximately €15m, and which received European funding to the tune of some €10m. The partners represent the geographic areas with the greatest marine wind-energy activity in Europe, multinational companies, SMEs and even universities and research centres.