Who We Are

The Undersea Vehicles Program (UVP) is a part of the oceanographic operations support division at UNCW's Center for Marine Science. UVP supports undersea research with a variety of robotic vehicles operated by experienced staff. These fly away, medium sized remotely operated vehicle (ROV) systems can be deployed rapidly and are operated by two experienced staff. The new Mohawk ROV can provide georeferenced HD video and digital still photography documentation, in addition to multiple sample collections for a variety of scientific objectives including:

Multibeam Ground Truth
Habitat Characterization
Marine Archeology
Biological Behavior Monitoring
Site Reconnaissance

An assortment of tools are available with the ROV, in addition to integration of scientist provided equipment, to provide a multi use platform capable of supporting a wide range of tasks including:

Search and Recovery
Sample Recovery
Sonar and Acoustics
Test Platform

UVP also operates a Slocum glider Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) for the collection of physical ocean water data.

Below is a video created by Dr. Joshua Voss and Graduate Student Michael Studivan from Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. This video was filmed in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary during 2014-2015 research cruises.

Mission Statement

The Undersea Vehicles Program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington is dedicated to providing efficient undersea intervention with experienced remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) support.

With over 28 years of conducting undersea research, the UVP team possesses the skills and knowledge required to perform extensive end-to-end mission coordination and logistics, professional vehicle operations, and quality data collection.

UVP is uniquely qualified to provide access to and expertise associated with specialized ocean exploration and research vehicles, systems, and sensors to conduct ocean exploration, research, training, and technology development.