Barely 5 years after the inception of the program, MBARI AUVs were surveying the environs of Monterey Bay , providing high-resolution maps of water properties. Data quality was verified though comparison with concomitant ship surveys. As early as 2002, MBARI moved to completely replace monthly CTD ship surveys of Monterey Bay with these AUV surveys. Taking advantage of the Dorado's modular payload capability, a wide range of physical, chemical, and biological sensors were integrated into a CTD AUV, effectively replicating the suite of measurements that had been acquired through the ship surveys. Today the Dorado CTD surveys are a central element of MBARI time series activities.
In early 2006, the CTD AUV began operating in a shore launched mode. To implement routine operations of Dorado without a ship in attendance, innovations included robust on-board exception handling to eliminate nuisance mission aborts, an emergency drop-weight to ensure positive buoyancy in the event of mission failure, and the addition of Iridium satellite telemetry to manage vehicle operations from shore.
Today the CTD project maintains a robust observation program of Monterey Bay and California Current waters with surveys approximately every three weeks. These surveys cover waters over the shelf and Monterey Canyon , along transects serving the research interests of multiple MBARI scientists. The AUV itself has demonstrated an unprecedented level of reliability, performing almost 2000 km of survey in 2005. During August of 2005, over 660 km of survey was run over the course of a week in support of the Layered Ocean Complexity (LOCO) project, operating the AUV from the R/V Sproul, operated by Scripps Institution of Oceanography.