Scientists and Engineers Work to Market New Instruments

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers have partnered with two companies to build and market undersea technology developed at WHOI: the Imaging FlowCytobot, an automated underwater microscope, and BlueComm, an underwater communications system that uses light to provide wireless transmission of data, including video imagery, in real or near-real time. WHOI biologists Robert Olson and Heidi Sosik, creators of the Imaging FlowCytobot, have licensed their instrument to Falmouth-based McLane Research Laboratories, which manufactures and sells a wide range of precision oceanographic instruments. WHOI engineers Norman E. Farr and Jonathan Ware are partnering with U.K.-based underwater acoustics and communications company Sonardyne International Ltd., to create the joint venture, Lumasys. The Imaging FlowCytobot detects, photographs, and collects data on microscopic plants and animals -- phytoplankton and zooplankton – in the ocean, characterizing, measuring, and quantifying their cells in order to identify them. The automated instrument is low-powered and low-maintenance; it gathers information 24 hours a day, for up to six months at a time, and sends it via fiber-optic cable tether back to a surface ship or land-based lab. Olson says the instrument was borne of frustration. He and Sosik wanted a clearer picture of the types and numbers of plankton living in the ocean, but weren’t satisfied with traditional methods of gathering samples every few hours on research ships at sea. In 2007, while collaborating with Texas A&M biological oceanographer Lisa Campell in the Gulf of Mexico, a prototype version of the Imaging FlowCytobot detected high levels of the toxic algae, Dinophysis cf. ovum, an organism that causes diarrhetic shellfish poisoning in humans. They alerted local health officials, who promptly closed shellfish beds and recalled local oysters, clams, and mussels. As a result, no shellfish-related human illnesses were reported, and a local oyster festival went on—with non-contaminated shellfish brought in from elsewhere. Using the Imaging FlowCytobot in the Arctic Ocean, scientists recently discovered a huge bloom of phytoplankton under meter-thick ice, where they previously thought sunlight-requiring phytoplankton could not grow.