On Site in the Gulf

WHOI Senior Scientist Cabell Davis, together with MIT/WHOI Joint Program graduate student Nick Loomis, this week deployed their holographic plankton camera on a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) from the M/V Jack Fitz in the water above the well leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The holocamera (visible on the right side of the box-like ROV above) was originally designed to identify and measure minute plants and animals such as copepods and fish eggs in the open ocean. The team has adapted their system for use in the Gulf and have discovered that it is also suited for measuring the size and distribution of oil droplets in the water column. This information is important for their collaborators at Applied Science Associates, Inc., to model the oil plume more accurately. (Photo courtesy of Cabell Davis, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)