(Dartmouth, Nova Scotia) May 6, 2009 – MetOcean is pleased to unveil the redesign of our SVP (Surface Velocity Program) Drifting Buoy. MetOcean’s redesign of the SVP is a vast advancement to the spherical drifter family.  

The SVP drifter has been designed and thoroughly tested to track ocean current and provide environmental data at a specified depth beneath the ocean surface, the new design brings the product to a considerably more reliable level.  The existing SVP design was assessed with special interest placed on modernizing the parts utilized, simplifying manufacturing processes, developing more efficient product performance and quality testing. With the accomplishment of a 65 per cent overall part count reduction, standardization of parts and hardware, new local suppliers sourced, an upgraded electronic controller and new operating software, and development of a new tests optimized test set are all improvements of the redesigned SVP.  

Andrew Lowery, from the MetOcean Engineering department comments “The new SVP design has a modular design that allows the customer to choose a drifter that best suits their requirements.  The redesigned SVP with all available options will collect GPS, sea surface temperature, barometric pressure and battery voltage data.  Additional data is available as well that will help the customer work with their unit.  The new design is easily deployed by a single operator equipped with the included one page deployment instruction.  No special tools are required during deployment.”

The standard MetOcean SVP drifting buoy was originally developed to meet the requirements of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) scientific community.  The Surface Velocity Program (SVP) drifter is a Lagrangian current following drifter designed to track the water currents (15 meters deep) beneath the ocean surface.  The SVP buoy has since proven to be an asset to the Oceanographic, Meteorological, and Oil and Gas markets.  Today, the MetOcean WOCE buoys are used by major weather forecasting agencies and can be found throughout the world’s oceans. 

For more information about the new SVP design please contact our sales department at sales@metocean.com.