Meeting Abstracts
A glimpse into the ocean interior: toward an autonomous imaging system for monitoring gelatinous zooplankton
S. Marini, A. Griffa, A. Molcard, M. Borghini, A. Conversi, S. Aliani, S. Lavorano, K. Schroeder
CNR-ISMAR, LSEET, Acquario di Genova, RSMAS-UM, SAHFOS, Plymouth University
(Abstract received 05/12/2012 for session A)
ABSTRACT
Despite the growing number of observations collected in the last decades, the dynamics of planktonic marine populations are still largely unknown, especially in the open and interior ocean.
Especially challenging is the knowledge of gelatinous zooplankton distribution, since this type of plankton has a very fragile structure and cannot be directly sampled using traditional net based techniques.In the last two decades, there has been an increasing interest in the oceanographic community toward the use of autonomous mobile platforms for extensive in-situ measurements and ocean monitoring, including Lagrangian floating buoys and quasi-Lagrangian gliders.
We present a feasibility study and a proof of concept for the use of such autonomous mobile platforms for an imaging system to monitor jelly fish and ctenophores ("jellies") in the ocean interior at various scales in space and time. The specific and significant challenge of this type of application is related to the capability of the system of recognizing the content of the input image, decide whether it is relevant or not, encode such content into a specific format depending on the particular application context and finally communicate the content remotely. Prototypes and preliminary results are shown and future improvements and directions are discussed.