The Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN) is a Research Infrastructure (RI) labeled by the ICTS (Unique Scientific and Technological Infrastructure) Spanish National Roadmap, co-funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of the Spanish governent and the Canary Islands government and by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under the Operational Programme of the Canary Islands. PLOCAN provides: (1) An ocean observatory for the continuous and real-time monitoring in fields such as the study of global change and ocean acidification, water-column and deep-sea ecosystems, ocean biogeochemistry and geophysics. It consists of several permanent and mobile systems that interoperate to offer environmental impact monitoring, instrument testing, calibration and validation from shallow waters to the deep seabed; (2) A test bed for the research, demonstration and operation of marine technologies, especially those related to marine renewable energy. We provide a robust and secure underwater electric infrastructure to evacuate the generated energy to the power grid connection, and a control centre for data analysis.; (3) A base for underwater vehicles: we own a series of underwater unmanned state-of-the-art technologies such as gliders, ROVs and AUVs. Besides, we support missions deploying customers´ vehicles. We have a dedicated control room to track the UUVs on real-time and laboratories and warehouses to support the missions´ needs.
