Autonomous profiling buoy system: a new powerful tool for research and operational oceanography

In June 2013 the Institute of Marine Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISMAR) started the test phase of one of the few Mediterranean autonomous profiling systems installed in a mooring configuration in open sea transmitting daily hydrological vertical profiles in real time through satellite communication. The selected site is the Corsica Channel, a narrow passage between Corsica and Capraia islands connecting two main regions of the western Mediterranean: the Tyrrhenian and the Liguro-Provençal basins. The Corsica Channel represents a 'choke point' for the study of the dynamics and evolution of the Western Mediterranean