2021 Drifter Tracks
Resolving transport pathways through New England's continental shelf waters and beyond
updated every two hoursSee a GoogleMap of just this month's tracks.
See an animation of tracks.
Download drifter construction manuals and lesson plans
Find out how to get involved with the project
Predict where a drifter will go (not maintained in 2020)
To see this weeks's tracks overlaid on other fields (sst, models, etc), go to the
MARACOOS OCEANSMAP site
Access the historical drifter data.
Read about drifters in the news (no longer maintained)
Get information on a related unmanned sailboat project
Plots of this year's tracks are linked in the table below.
Get raw statistics.
Check on your satellite fix use.
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Drifter tracks from in previous years:
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
2009 |
2010 |
2011 |
2012 |
2013 |
2014 |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 .
To get PYTHON processing routines, email James Manning for the latest versions.
To see information on individual clusters, click the links in the following chronological table
| Institution (data) |
PI (report/blog) | Deployers (deploy video) | Date Deployed (animation) | Dropsite (forecast) | #units | Science (googleearth) | Status (googlemap) | ID-Type of Unit (photo) | Fate (photo) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Educational Passages | Baldwin/Stymiest | 2018 | Multiple Places | 20? | education | underway | unmanned sailboats | ||
| Educational Passages | Stymiest | 2019 | Multiple Places | 12+ | education | underway | unmanned sailboats | Navis_Stellum, MPA_Sewee_Spirit, American Sunset, SV_Jamestown, and more ... | |
| Educational Passages | Stymiest | 2020 | Multiple Places | 8+ | education | underway | unmanned sailboats | DespaSEAto; RiptideII; Rye_Riptide; Philbert; to name a few ... | |
| Educational Passages | Stymiest | 2021 | Multiple Places | 1+ | education | underway | unmanned sailboats | Blue Heron_3, BHS_Roweboat, and more ... | |
| Oregon State University | Arnesen | ?? | 05 March 2020; 14 Oct 2020 | off Oregon | 2 | buoy | underway | Buoymooring | 203431241 |
| Governors Academy | Knight | F/V Lady Rebecca | 05 Oct 2020 | Fippennies Ledge Gulf of Maine | ~2 | education | done | surface drifter | stopped reporting in mid-March 2021 south of Grand Banks |
| United Technical Center | Baldwin | Captain John Thomas F/V Rachel Leah | 30 Dec 2020 | off Georges Bank | 1 | education | done | unmanned sailboat | The Alexander made its way across the ocean and in record time!! Crash landed 4 miles from IFREMER in France and recovered by Herle Mercier and Charlene Feucher |
| South Kingston RI Schools | Dillman | R/V Endeavor | 21 Feb 2021 | off Hatteras | 1 | Education | done | surface drifter | 211400711 caught in Gulf Stream and quit reporting on 19 Mar 2021 near NE Seamounts |
| GOMI/North Shore Montesorri | Paddy Cummings | F/V Lady Rebecca | 29 June 2021 | off Newburyport | 1 | education | underway | surface drifters | 216430701 skirted the coast, made it to Cape Cod Bay by mid-July, and ... |
| Wells National Marine Research Reserve/UNH | Jason Goldstein | NH's R/V Endeavor | 13 July 2021 | NH coast | 7 | Lobsters | underway | surface drifters | 217430701 ...; 217430702 (with sensors) was reported by a mariner on 26 July as a "capsized sailboat" and subsequently recovered by Scituate Harbor USCG; 217430703 recovered by Tory, the lifeguard at a Duxbury MA town beach, on 29 Sept 2021; 217430704 ...; 217430705 came ashore 7/19 in Gully Point Cove in Rockport and recovered by Maritime Gloucester's Amanda Madeira; 217430706 (with sensors)...; 217430707 (with sensors) ...; |
| Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab | Steve Ruberg | ?? | Aug 2021 | Great Lakes | 2 | Waverider backup | planned | Unmanned Surface Vehicles | 218410821... |
| Stockton University | Anna Pfeiffer-Herbert | ?? | Fall 2021 | off New Jersey | 1 | Education | planned | surface drifter | 213400731... |
| UMAINE | Gabby Hillyer | ?? | Apr 2021 | Mid-Coast Maine | 3 | Education | planned | instrumented bucket drifters | 213400731... |
Note: Most units are prepared by marine science students. The majority are standard "surface drifters" marking only the top 1-meter of the water column, but some units, as in the case of EP boats, track the wind and wave at the surface and some have subsurface drogues typically centered at 10m-15m below the surface. For details, call 508-495-4727 or email james.manning@noaa.gov.
