Wireline Profiler

A wireline profiler is a moored instrument package that crawls up and down a fixed mooring cable, profiling the water column without a ship present. A motorized traction drive or a buoyancy-driven body such as the McLane Moored Profiler climbs the wire between programmed depths, carrying a CTD and often oxygen, fluorescence, and velocity sensors. It returns repeated high-vertical-resolution profiles at one point over months, capturing the time evolution of stratification, internal waves, and mixed-layer change. The wireline profiler combines the fixed-point endurance of a mooring with the vertical detail of a ship cast, filling the gap between discrete moored sensors at set depths.