Video Plankton Recorder

Underwater system for automatic image acquisition of zooplankton, which consists essentially of a high-end PC and a high-performance digital camera, captures plankton objects at 15 frames/second and stores the high-resolution images in compressed form on an integrated hard drive. Together with the simultaneously recorded sensor data of the ambient parameters, as well as position and depth data, the images provide detailed information about the species-specific distribution of the zooplankton in the sea. In addition, the previously obtained image data were automatically analyzed with regard to the classification of the different species. This type of automatic image evaluation with the help of an image database offers many advantages in contrast to the previously used, personnel-intensive methods of sampling with plankton nets and subsequent counting and evaluation of the organisms under the Microsoft.

Setup:

  • Camera + Embedded PC
  • innovative microcontroller control
  • Reference database
  • automatic image recognition software for the detection of the respective plankton composition and types