Seaglider 142 made its last call home on 24 June 01:34 (UTC). So far, there is nothing in the logs to suggest that something was going wrong. It is a mystery that will hopefully be solved by finding the glider via accoustic tracking.

The shore-side crew have identified the 4 possible scenarios that are most likely:

1) It's stuck on the bottom. It could be snagged on something, or it might have suffered a VBD failure. (The VBD, or "Variable Buoyancy Device" is the rubber balloon outside the pressure hull that can be filled with oil to change the glider's buoyancy.)

2) It's getting GPS locations like normal, but can't call home for some reason. This does occasionally happen. If this is the case, then SG142 is most likely continuing its bowtie survey pattern with longer pauses at the surface while it keeps trying to call in.

3) Its antenna is broken, and it can't call home or get GPS signals. In this case, the glider will simply continue to fly on the same heading it was before -- northwest, eventually to cross the ridge and possibly wash up on the shores of Greenland.

4) It went into recovery on its final dive and the antenna is broken, or the comms are dead for some other reason. This also happens occasionally. In this case, the glider will stay on the surface, rolling in the waves and drifting with the surface currents, which as we've seen before can be very variable...

The setup we use to ping the glider has a range of a couple kilometers. Although the glider will have had two days to travel by the time the R/V Saemundsson is able to get out to the operational area, we're hopeful that it won't have gotten too far away. A search like this is a long shot, but they have worked in the past.

As the glider pilots' union is fond of saying, there's nothing to do now but Wait and Hope.