AI-Powered Plankton Monitoring Aboard the Oleander

It’s a plankton sampler that we call IFCB for short.

Every twenty minutes it draws up about a teaspoon of water and takes images of the phytoplankton and some microzooplankton.

I worked with a whole team of collaborators at WHOI, Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS), and the crew of the Oleander to get an IFCB installed there.

There is so much to learn about the plankton dynamics as the ship crosses the Gulf Stream twice a week.

We see what is living on the continental shelf, what's at the edge of the north side of the Gulf Stream, across, and then on the other side.