Today with increasing use of remote sensing techniques
from satellites and airplanes more and more data becomes
available and needs to be processed. Current remote sensing
technologies, airborne or from space, do not penetrate very
far below the ocean’s surface. In order to gain more insight
into the temporal and spatial processes below the surface we
were until recently still depending on ship based measurements
and moorings. Over the last decades alternative technologies
such as subsurface floats, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs)
and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have emerged
to complement the existing sensing techniques. Visions of
autonomous platforms roaming the oceans as described in [9]
and [1] have not come true yet, but technological advances
pushed by these visions brought us a long way from the
Challenger cruise.