Image

Eyes on Plankton

WHOI engineers, together with scientists from Duke University and the University of Oregon Institute recently deployed a novel plankton sampler attached to the autonomous underwater vehicle Sentry from R/V Atlantis. The Sentry Precision Robotic Impeller Driven (SyPRID) sampler gently pumps large volumes of water, and the microscopic organisms it contains, through a net system housed within two carbon fiber composite tubes. The team used the NSF-funded sampler to collect animal larvae and other organisms from above a methane cold seep off the coast of New England. Their work is already changing how scientists think about larvae in the deep ocean. (Photo by Carl Kaiser, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)