The Acqua Alta oceanographic platform of the National Research Counci (CNR)l has been operating in the Northern Adriatic since March 1970. It is located 8 nautical miles off the coast in front of Venice, on a depth of 16 meters.
Equipped with the most modern technologies, it is the only platform in the world operating in the open sea that allows the prolonged stay on board of researchers and technicians during the measurement campaigns and with any weather-marine condition.The permanent instrumentation on board includes complete meteorological and oceanographic stations whose data are both recorded on board and continuously transmitted to the ground.
As the only permanent and manageable point in the sea, it provided useful information for the calibration of instruments installed on artificial satellites such as the ERS-1 altimeter - in orbit from 1991 to 2000 - and contributed to the acquisition of information on the optical properties of the sea taken by SeaWiFS and OLTS.