Jaffe Laboratory for Underwater Imaging~Jaffe Laboratory for Underwater Imaging

Current Research Projects

Autonomous Underwater Explorer:
Buoyancy controlled and acoustically tracked swarms of vehicles.

ZOOPS:
A multiview, multimodal acoustic and optical zooplankton sonar and optical imaging system.

OmniCam:
An omnidirectional, high resolution, high speed, imaging system to record the radiometric light field in the open ocean

Oceanic Explorer Game:
A Flash-based game, created to introduce acoustic, visual, and chemical sensing concepts

LUMIS-2:
A portable and multispectral dive camera, designed for rapid in situ fluorescence surveys of coral reefs at multiple emission wavelengths

Recording of a Whale Swimming by an Array of AUEs

Posted Fri, 2013-03-15 14:38 by paul

While deploying 6 of our AUEs on a stereo recording rig at 16m depth, we happened to capture a whale swimming near the surface above the AUEs. Tristan Hiatt processed the acoustic data from the AUEs into a great stereo track and overlayed it on a video of the event recorded from the boat. Have a look and listen below, you'll see and hear the whale coming to the surface. It's best with headphones!

WhaleVid

Measurement system for marine animal reflectance functions

Posted Tue, 2013-02-05 14:45 by justin

The journal article "Measurement system for marine animal reflectance functions" by Justin M. Haag, Jules S. Jaffe, and Alison M. Sweeney has been recently published in Optics Express. This paper presents details of the optical instrument design and calibration for a new version of the OSMAR (optical scatterometer for measurement of angular reflectance) system that was described last year. Also included, are scattering patterns for squid and fish species that show interesting similarities in light scatter from two otherwise quite different animals. The physical explanations and potential ecological implications of the observed scattering from these species, as well as from others not yet presented, is a subject of future work.

Benthic Microscope Image of Coral Fluorescence

Posted Fri, 2012-12-21 14:59 by paul

Below is a fluorescence image from our scanning benthic microscope prototype showing GFP and Chlorophyll fluorescence from coral polyps over a large depth of field.

Coral Fluorescence Imaged With Benthic Microscope: field of view 3 mm (h) x 1.5 mm (v)

Successful Field Tests with Free-Drifting Mini-AUEs

Posted Fri, 2012-12-21 12:23 by paul

On Monday we completed our first successful test with multiple, free-drifting Mini-AUEs. This is a major milestone for the project as it marks the first time that the vehicles have been deployed and recovered in the field un-tethered. It is also the first time that multiple units have been deployed together. We released two units programmed to hold roughly a 6m depth while drifting for one hour off Torrey Pines Beach. We did three consecutive 1-hour deployments and all of the critical functions of the vehicles worked perfectly every time. Below are a few photos from the deployment and a example of preliminary data.

TwoUnitsUnderWater

Best Student Paper Runner-Up Award

Posted Fri, 2012-10-26 12:09 by justin

The proceedings paper "Measurement System for Obtaining Marine Animal Reflectance Functions" by Justin M. Haag, Alison M. Sweeney, and Jules S. Jaffe was recently selected for the Best Student Paper Runner-Up Award at the Ocean Optics XXI Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Please also check out the associated poster which provides a summary of the paper as well as a preview of results from our cruise off the Hawaiian islands on the R/V Kilo Moana this past June. Stay tuned as there is much more to come!

justin's blog
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First Sea Test with Mini-AUE Unit 1

Posted Wed, 2012-10-24 16:40 by paul

We completed a variety of sea tests on Tuesday with Mini-AUE unit 1. In general things went quite well and we were able to have the vehicle complete several profiles, receive GPS position data, and recover the vehicle. Below is a photo of Paul Roberts programming the vehicle on the boat (Photo Credit: Rich Walsh).

Paul programs a Mini-AUE Below is a map of two tracks inferred from GPS data (0001 and 0002). The map shows the start position (farther off shore) where the vehicle entered the water and the end position (closer to shore) where it surfaced after completing its profile. The vehicle was underwater for 30 minutes during each profile. Although the profiles were performed at diffferent times, we can see from the trajectories that the current direction and velocity was quite consistent and in both cases the vehicle drifted by roughly 300m towards the shore during the 30 minutes.

Mini-AUE Unit 1 GPS Positions

Underwater Plankton Microscope Featured in American Museum of Natural History Biosnapshot

Posted Mon, 2012-10-15 10:30 by paul

Our prototype underwater microscope was deployed in July and is described in this great video from the American Museum of Natural History BioSnapshot :

Jules Jaffe: A Wizard of the Sea

Posted Wed, 2012-06-13 08:56 by paul

Jules Jaffe made the front page of the Union Tribune Sunday June 10, 2012! Check out the full article by Gary Robbins.

Jules Jaffe Wizard of the Sea

Inter-Calibration Cruise With ZOOPS

Posted Mon, 2012-04-30 12:59 by paul

Last month we had a successful inter-calibration cruise with our zooplankton imaging system ZOOPS. We set our to record simultaneous stereo images and broadband acoustic reflections from individual zooplankton. After two days of hard work we had over 40,000 image pairs and acoustic reflections. We are now sifting through the data to find records where the animal was in both camera images and the acoustic beam at the same time. We plan to use these to better understand the relationship between taxa, size, shape, and orientation of the animals and their acoustic scattering signatures.