The backend of the Scripps Plankton Camera System is currently undergoing some much needed upgrades and revitalization. Sadly, this means that the plankton viewer is down until the work is completed. Rest assured, the data is still there and will be accessible again soon!
Squid Pro Quo
Jules recently gave a talk at the Birch Acquarium as part of their Jeffrey B. Graham Perspectives on Ocean Sicence Lecture Series. In case you missed out on attending the lecture in-person, it is now available online. Take a look at this humorous and informative talk here!
Acoustical Society of America selects AUE paper for award
The editors of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America have selected Perry Naughton‘s paper on using ambient sound to localize our Autonomous Underwater Explorers for their Technical Area Pick for Signal Processing. With colleagues from the Jaffe lab, UCSD, and Université Grenoble Alpes, Perry demonstrated that the free drifting floats could be tracked relative to each other with only sounds of opportunity from the surrounding environment — no extra pingers needed! The technique could be used to facilitate low cost, low energy multi-vehicle surveys.
M-AUEs at the Science Museum in London
Jules was in London a few weeks ago talking about the future of underwater exploration at the Science Museum. In a few weeks, the museum is opening a new exhibit on autonomous land, air, and sea vehicles that will feature the Mini-Autonomous Underwater Explorers developed in the Jaffe Lab. Check out the video the museum produced of Jules talking about the instrument on YouTube!
Autonomous Underwater Explorers Featured in EARTH Magazine
Our Autonomous Underwater Explorers (AUEs) are featured in an article in EARTH magazine published today.
Links:
EARTH Magazine January 2019 Issue
Direct PDF Download of Article
Scripps Plankton Cameras Featured on CENIC Blog: Identifying Tiny Organisms with Giant Impact on Climate
The CENIC blog has a nice article about our work using machine learning to automatically identify plankton in the 1 billion images collected thus far by the Scripps Plankton Cameras:
Lens of Time: Growing Against the Odds
Our work on developing 3D stereo microscopy has been featured in the California Academy of Sciences bioGraphic Lens of Time: Growing Against the Odds. Check out the video here: https://www.biographic.com/posts/sto/lens-of-time-growing-against-the-odds
Autonomous Underwater Explorers Described in the Journal Nature Communications
Today results from our first field deployment with a swarm of Autonomous Underwater Explorers (M-AUEs) were published in the journal Nature Communications. The article describes the deployment of 16 M-AUEs several kilometers off the coast of Torrey Pines State Park. Along with the M-AUEs, a surface array of acoustic pingers was deployed in a pentagon formation and used to track the M-AUEs underwater in three dimensions. The resulting tracks were used to visualize internal waves propagating through the swarm. The article: A Swarm of Autonomous Miniature Underwater Robot Drifters for Exploring Submesoscale Ocean Dynamics was authored by Jules S. Jaffe, Peter J. S. Franks, Paul L. D. Roberts, Diba Mirza, Curt Schurgers, Ryan Kastner and Adrien Boch.
We would like to thank Rich Walsh who provided small boat support during the development of the M-AUEs and the operations performed during these experiments, Devin Ratelle, Eric Orenstein, Phil Bresnahan, Mike Ouimet, and Mike Bianco for assisting in the deployment and recovery during the experiment, and the maintainers of the OAR/Keck Pool at SIO for facilitating countless hours of pool testing leading up to the field work.
Below are videos and articles covering the work.
New Benthic Underwater Microscope Described in the Journal Nature Communications
Today results from our work on the Benthic Underwater Microscope (BUM) were published in Nature Communications. The article Underwater microscopy for in situ studies of benthic ecosystems reports on the development of the BUM and its application to studying several important benthic processes in situ. The paper was authored by Jaffe Lab members Andrew D. Mullen, Tali Treibitz, Paul L.D. Roberts, and Jules Jaffe; as well as coral ecologists Emily L.A. Kelly, Rael Horwitz, and Jennifer E. Smith.
We would like to thank Dr. Amatzia Genin who provided support and critical guidance during the studies of coral polyp behavior, which were filmed at the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat, Israel. We also thank the Keck Foundation for their support funding the instrument development. Additionally we thank the National Science Foundation, Link Foundation, and Binational Science Foundation for supporting Andrew Mullen’s research.
Below are several videos and articles covering the work.
New York Times:
UCSD interview with Andrew Mullen:
Interview with Jules Jaffe
Nature Video:
NSF Science 360 Video:
https://science360.gov/obj/video/86e00b24-c628-4e9b-9ce0-67edd693dc82/nsf-science-now-episode-45