Comments on: Diatoms and Dessert http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/05/01/25899/ Tapping experts in climate, geology, oceanography, ecology, sustainable development, global health, energy, food and water, State of the Planet captures stories of how the Earth works and how we can sustainably make our lives better. Fri, 17 May 2013 14:54:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Beth Stauffer http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/05/01/25899/comment-page-1/#comment-56672 Beth Stauffer Fri, 04 May 2012 23:28:59 +0000 http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/?p=25899#comment-56672 Thank you for reading, Patrick! The FlowCAM is actually housed in one of the labs on the ship and we introduce water we’ve collected through a funnel into the optical path. There are some similar instruments that you can actually put in the water, either towed behind a boat (like the Video Plankton Recorder) or lowered vertically on a cage (like the LISST-Holo). The FlowCAM can be hooked up from a dock or pier, though, and monitor plankton populations in near-real-time! So far it continues to work well, and we are keeping our fingers crossed for the next few days :)

]]> By: Patrick Cooney http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/05/01/25899/comment-page-1/#comment-56322 Patrick Cooney Thu, 03 May 2012 11:25:12 +0000 http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/?p=25899#comment-56322 Beth,

Thank you for describing that FlowCAM used to photograph the phytoplankton. I am jealous of this piece of equipment, and that it takes awesome photos while being towed behind a boat. Incredible! Thankfully there are smart engineers out there who dream up these excellent machines.

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