Drogued Drifters: What Does It Mean?

[ATY]

Hey guys,
I am not sure if this is the right forum for this question.
So I started to read some papers for my master thesis in environmental physics (no idea if this is the correct translation) and there they talked about "drogued" drifters and "undrogued" drifters in the ocean, from which they got some data. Can somebody explain to me what "drogued" means ? I tried to look it up, but all I find is the translation of a french word.
Hope you can help me,
ATY

 

[Bystander]

If I say, "Air or wind blown," and, "Sea anchor," to you ...?

 

[Bandersnatch]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drogue

 

[Ross McNeilage]

Here is a help. these are made for yachts. Bryan is in Victoria Australia. http://www.seriesdrogue.com/

 

[olivermsun]

It's just what the previous posters have been talking about. The drogue is a big hole-y sock that makes the drifter tend to follow the currents at whatever depth the drogue is deployed at. Some more sophisticated systems deliberately change depth to "ride" the currents at different depths.

 

[Baluncore]

The drogues used on drifters are different from sea anchors.
This paper describes the drifters and has a diagram of the deeper vertical drogues used.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/docs/LumpkinPazos.pdf