Lousiana State University

Mark C. Benfield
Associate Professor
Louisiana State University
Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences

Over the past two years, my colleagues from Oregon State University (OSU) and I have been engaged in research to develop new tools for studying marine plankton. With funding from the National Science Foundation, we’ve been developing a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that can use input from temperature, salinity, and other sensors, to fly along specific temperature or density layers in the ocean. This is important because we are learning that plankton frequently accumulate in narrow dense layers that are associated with changes in water density or temperature. These ‘thin-layers’ may be important foraging regions for larval fish and other marine organisms.

As part of this research, I have developed an underwater, high-magnification camera system to quantify zooplankton in the thin layers. The system is based on a DVC-2000 Gig-E camera, which is networked to a surface computer via a fiber-optic umbilical from the ROV. Lighting is provided by a custom system that projects light pulses from a pair of fiber-coupled 495 mW red lasers. The camera system provides data on the identities and abundances of zooplankton within a volume of water defined by the lasers. This information is used to interpret data from acoustic and other sensors on the ROV.

During our recent research cruise off the Oregon coast, power was accidently directed into the DVC-2000 I/O connector. The resulting damage prevented the camera from triggering our lasers although the rest of the camera appeared unaffected. Fortunately we were within cell phone range of the shore. A call to DVC triggered a technical support response that was simply outstanding. Technicians diagnosed the fault and arranged to overnight a replacement I/O board to OSU ship operations in Newport Oregon. They also sent a replacement CCD board in case the new I/O board failed to fully address the damage. The replacement parts were delivered to our research vessel (R/V) by the smaller R/V Elakha within 24 h of my first call to DVC. With the assistance of Dave O’Gorman, the R/V Wecoma’s electronic technician, we were back in operation less than 30 h after the accident.

While the performance of my DVC-2000 camera has been superb, the quality of customer and technical support from DVC can only be described as outstanding. Without their prompt response and willingness to do whatever was needed to get our system back in the water, a substantial investment in our research project would have been compromised.

ctenophore

System mounted on Remote Operated Vehicle

DVC to the rescue, somewhere on the Pacific Ocean