Mysterious, unclaimed wave glider washes ashore

SCOTLAND—The Isle of Tiree Coastguard Rescue Team has been looking for the owner of a mysterious vessel that washed ashore on a Scottish island. The vessel was reported to the coastguard team on Sept. 28. The craft, a dark grey color and covered in solar panels and antennae, was reportedly found wedged in between a few rocks on the Isle of Tiree off the west coast of mainland Scotland.

“We are currently trying to find out some more information as to the objects origin and owner,” HM Coastguard Rescue Team Isle of Tiree wrote in a Sept. 28 Facebook post. “If anyone has any information please get in touch.”

People in the comment section of the post were quick to identify the vessel as an autonomous wave rider. These vessels gather ocean data using energy from the waves and solar panels and are used by research agencies across the globe.

“That is a Liquid Robotics wave glider, as all the UK science ones I’m aware of are bright yellow I would say it’s likely travelled a long way from home (which they are usually perfectly capable of doing),” one commenter, who said he worked for National Oceanography Centre, wrote in response to the post.

Wave gliders made by the U.S. company Liquid Robotics are capable of traveling thousands of miles and are used by both the U.S. Navy and Britain’s Royal Navy as well as other government agencies and scientific researchers.

There were no navigation lights or a radar reflector on the vessel, creating some speculation online about it operating covertly.

So far, no word on the vessel’s owner and what they were doing with the wave glider.

This is not the first time something like this has happened. A similar craft, in much worse condition, washed up on a beach less than a hundred miles away in Northern Ireland in September 2019. This one was also grey and was a bare hull with antennas and other attachments broken off. There was no follow up as to whether that vessel’s owner had been located.