Planktoscope

Biological OceanographyFrugal ScienceDistributed ManufacturingInstrumentationSustainable

Jan 1

Written By Prakash Lab

CATEGORY:

Biological Oceanography Frugal Science Distributed Manufacturing Instrumentation Sustainable

TAGS:

surveillance environmental monitoring microscopy frugal science citizen science sailing biological oceanography

ABSTRACT

The oceans represent 97% of all water on Earth and contain microscopic, drifting life, plankton, which drives global biogeochemical cycles. A major hurdle in assessing marine plankton is the planetary scale of the oceans and the logistical and economic constraints associated with their sampling. This difficulty is reflected in the limited amount of scientifically equipped fleets and affordable equipment. Planktoscope is a low-cost, open-source, flow-through microscope that enables high-throughput imaging of plankton in an autonomous manner. After building and testing many versions of this instrument, we are now focusing on building global community of curious explorers, partnerships and scaling up data analysis and quantitative ecology.

- https://www.planktoscope.org/
- https://www.fairscope.com/
- Basin-Scale Underway Quantitative Survey of Surface Microplankton Using Affordable Collection and Imaging Tools Deployed From Tara - https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.916025
- Plankton Planet: A frugal, cooperative measure of aquatic life at the planetary scale - https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.936972
- Tara validation of Planktoscope - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2022.916025/full
- Planktoscope protocol for plankton imaging V.1 - https://www.protocols.io/view/planktoscope-protocol-for-plankton-imaging-bp2l6bq3zgqe/v1

BIG QUESTION

“With many vessels and sailors venturing on water on a daily basis, can we leverage citizens across the world to engage in mapping and better understanding microbial life in the ocean - plankton?”

Oceans contain:

20,000+
species of plankton

Number of Planktoscopes:

150+
units deployed

Number of objects imaged:

10
million

What is Planktoscope?

With our knowledge in low-cost high-quality microscopy, we designed a modular and open-source hardware/software imaging platform that is versatile and reconfigurable. It can be adapted to a number of applications in aquatic biology, ecology, parasitology and many other applications.

PlanktoScope is a low-cost, high-throughput quantitative imaging of laboratory and field plankton samples while enabling rapid device reconfiguration to match the evolving needs of the sampler. PlanktoScope is capable of autonomously imaging 1.7 ml per minute with a 2.8 µm/px resolution and can be controlled from any WiFi-enabled device.

The PlanktoScope’s small size, ease of use, and low cost - under $1000 in parts - enable its deployment for customizable monitoring of laboratory cultures or natural micro-plankton communities. This also paves the way toward consistent and long-term measurement of plankton diversity by an international fleet of citizen vessels at the planetary scale.