Vertical profiles of marine particulates: a step towards global scale comparisons using an Autonomous Visual Plankton Recorder

• Main Authors: Lindsay, Dhugal, Yamaguchi, Atsushi, Grossmann, Mary M., Nishikawa, Jun, Sabatés, Ana, Fuentes, Veronica, Hall, Mike, Keisuke, Sunahara, Yamamoto, Hiroyuki
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Plankton Society of Japan 2014
• Subjects: VPR; Marine snow; Vertical profiles; Global comparison; Zooplankton; Crest The; taiga
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/96008; https://doi.org/10.24763/bpsj.61.1_72

8 pages, 7 figures, 1 table An Autonomous Visual Plankton Recorder (AVPR) was used to record colour in situ images of plankton and other marine particulates at several oligotrophic stations around the world, including a northern hemisphere subtropical open ocean, a southern hemisphere tropical marginal sea, a northern hemisphere subtropical marginal sea, and a polar open ocean. Quantitative analyses and comparisons of particle concentrations, sizes and vertical profiles were possible after identification of optimal image enhancement settings and employment of a specially-developed macro routine in the off-the-shelf image analysis software Image Pro Plus. Marine particulate profiles, their relationships to oceanographic parameters and water mass structure, and the resolution-dependent limitations of the system are introduced and discussed This work was partially funded by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI, grant number 24248032, MEXT Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas TAIGA (20109003), and JST grant CREST, the fund for Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research by the AORI, UT. Peer reviewed