Free Republic

An autonomous ocean glider was disabled by a shark attack Sunday night near Sable Island, abruptly ending a scientific mission and putting the vehicle out of service for months. The wave glider was 200 kilometres off the coast of Nova Scotia listening for tagged halibut. "We lost communication with the rudder module, so we were no longer able to steer the glider, so it was drifting freely," said Richard Davis, manager of the glider group at Dalhousie University. "But we still had communication with it. We knew where it was all the time." An emergency 76-hour effort was undertaken to...