The DEVIN (Diving Ecological Vehicle In-Situ Navigator)—is a low-cost, open-source robot that can be deployed in the ocean to observe microscopic plankton. Our summer intern group developed this vehicle and named it after our lab engineer. While The DEVIN cannot operate a laser cutter or make bad puns, it is well-equipped to take images of plankton. Here are some photos of The DEVIN in action!
A few weeks ago, Or Ben Zi went to Maui to test the underwater image quality of the BUMP. The video shows her making adjustments to the BUMP while maintaining buoyancy. Quite impressive!
Unfortunately, Maui is suffering from a major wildfire outbreak at this time. The Jaffe Lab extends our deepest condolences to those harmed or lost during the fire. If you would like to support the people who have been affected by this disaster, please visit the Hawaii Community Foundation website where you can donate to the community relief fund.
Here are pictures from a recent excursion on the R/V Robert Gordon Sproul with a new cohort of bright-eyed interns. This was a fun and fulfilling adventure for them as quite a few of them have never been on a boat before.
We just published a new article about how we used our underwater microscope to track the eggs of Nassua grouper fish. This research is key to better understanding the spawing aggregation of this endangered species and find ways to help them. Please check it out and congrats to the lab on another publication!
Scripps’ website post on our research.
(Image sequences of Nassau grouper egg and larval development)
Another day, another publication! Congrats to Kasia Kenitz lead author on her use of data from our in situ pier plankton cameras. Here is a link to the article for everyone interested in the topic: Article Link.
(Image below: The SPC micro and mini are microscopes that were deployed underwater and used to capture images of plankton)
Check out this recent talk given by Jules Jaffe, where he discusses the experiments that bracket his career.
Big congratulations to Jules Jaffe on a recent publication on his approach to a non-invasive way to estimate coral polyp volume and surface area. The article details a set of algorithms that Jules developed to define the boundary between the coral polyp soft tissue and the environment, resulting in the first-ever measurements of surface area and polyp volume based on soft tissue boundaries. Below is a video of a rendered point cloud in 3D that shows optical backscatter magnitude in color. If you’re craving coral and interested in learning more about this system, check out the article here.
Here are some pictures from our recent research excursion on the R/V Robert Gordon Sproul. We took our new interns with us to earn their sea legs and show them how we get cool detailed photos of plankton.
The SPCs are still undergoing maintenance. We recently retrieved them from the pier with friendly cephalopod stowed away under our device. The sucker was a little attached, but we managed to safely return him to the sea. After handling the stowaway, we cleaned off as much kelp and barnacles as we could, then prepped the SPCs for dismantlement and a deep clean. Once they are refitted and redeployed, we will post an update here. Big thanks to our divers, Rich and Taylor, for helping get the cameras out of the water!
A committee of editors from the Journal of the Optical Society of America A (JOSA A) choose our paper on Plankton reconstruction through robust statistical optical tomography for the Best Research Paper Prize! They were particularly impressed by the thoroughness of the study and the clarity of our presentation. Check out the above link if you want to learn more about this topic.