The four vessels

Liquid Robotics launched a fleet of four wave-powered oceanic robots called Wave Gliders on a record setting journey today across the Pacific.

On a mission to gather gather vast amounts of data, which they hope will be used to foster new scientific discoveries, Liquid Robotics' Wave Gliders use an array of sensors to survey the oceans and will transmit the data in real time. All of the data collected during the year long journey available to anyone who chooses to follow the mission.

With water compromising 71 percent of the Earth's surface and only 5 percent of the world's oceans yet explored, Liquid Robotics is calling the exploration a challenge to the world to decide what the data mean and how to use it.

The value in this vast amount of data never collected before is unknown, and researchers hope that making the data available in an open-source system will push boundaries and advance oceanic sciences.

During the 300-plus-day mission, the four Wave Gliders will collectively travel more than 33,000 miles and map more than 2,250,000 data points, collecting ocean data on salinity, water temperatures, waves, weather, fluorescence, and dissoved oxygen.