Researchers hope that monitoring zoplankton from house will assist in endangered whales

Researchers are expecting a technology that identifies zoplinkton from space, eventually they will help track the movement of the severely endangered North Atlantic Right Whale in the Gulf of Main.

Biglo Laboratory scientists NASA are using satellite data for Ocean Sciences in the main carpetSmall Zoplankton which is the main food source of the North Atlantic Wright Whale.

Zoplankton, which is smaller than a rash of rice, has a red colored pigment – the same pigment that makes the salmon pink. When large amounts of organisms are collected on the surface of the water, the pigment affects the spectrum of sunlight that is absorbed and reflected, and the satellite can detect the resulting color innings.

Researchers hopes that by monitoring the presence of zoplankton, they will be able to predict the movement of the North Atlantic right whale someday, and will try to protect them.

“The Gulf of Men’s situations is changing rapidly,” says Catherine Mitchell, a senior research scientist and co-author from Biglo Laboratory. They have become rapidly heated. And we believe that their main food source has gone to a different place. ” A new study Regarding ocean color technology.

“So if we know where the whales are, it can help inform the conversation around their protection.”

The North Atlantic Right Whale is close to extinction, with only 370 remaining, and only 70 reproductive women are.

After the identification of 17 dead whales in Canada and the United States in 2017, Canada implemented fishing and ship speed in some areas of the Atlantic region to prevent further deaths due to vessel attacks and complications in fishing gear.

Knowing where the whales are, and where they can go, can help governments to use fishing closed or vessel speed restrics more efficiently.

Red watching red

The idea of ​​using satellite data to try to find Bigloe Laboratory Researchers found the idea of ​​using satellite carpet From the previous study which was removed from Norway.

But when he began to review the data from the Gulf of dating back in 2003, he saw something unusual.

“We were finding out the pattern out of the season when we would expect to see carpetWho made us realize that we were also looking at other things, “Mitchell said.

The model was not only picking up carpetBut the other zoplankton that has the same red pigment. Mitchell and Rebekah shunmugapandi, lead author and post-doctoral scientists at the bigelow laboratory, are now trying to refine their method to try to pointing to the favorite food species of North Atlantic Right Whale.

The Shunmugapandi is working to validate some satellite data, with the researchers in the Gulf of the main as well as the actual right whale views.

“They walk with their prey, don’t you?” Shunmugapandi said. “So with all of them in CITU Kalunas And the right whale viewing data set … It’s like a reverse study I am doing. ,

New satellite, new possibilities

A potential solution to differentiate carpet Others can revolve around the Earth with red-pigmented zoplankton.

Researchers have so far rely on NASA’s Aqua satellite figures, but light spectrum, equipment used to catch modis, is close to the end of its lifetime. However, NASA’s new speed (Plankton, aerosol, cloud, ocosystom) satellite, which was launched last year, can significantly improve scientists’ capabilities to analyze the ocean color.

The light-addressing device of Aqua identifies 10 wavelengths of light. Researchers used only three wavelengths for their studies.

The new instrument in a new instrument called Ocean Color Instrument can detect 280 wavelengths.

Shunmugpandi says that researchers will need to develop a new computer model to analyze a broad spectrum of light.

“Hope with too much wavelength, we can be able to tease some other things, especially things are actually like various species,” Michel says.

‘1 piece of puzzle’

Currently, zooplankton researchers try to identify and track species, act as a microscopic underwater, using video cameras, to check them in the net, and study the sound of water.

Catherine Johnson is a research scientist in Matsya and the oceans in Canada who specializes in Zoplankton Ecology.

She says that it is difficult to determine and identify the amount of zoplankton as the ocean is so spacious and their distribution is variable in space and time. Most sampling techniques work best when they focus on a specific area or time limit.

Johnson, who was not involved in the new study, states that the remote sensing of Zoplankton can be a tool in scientists’ toolbox.

“It has the ability to provide space and time on time if you are looking for exceptionally dense and large aggregation that are right near the surface,” he said.

“This is a piece of puzzle, and I think the study is a proof of the concept to try to apply these methods in an area where they have not been implemented earlier.”

Michelle and Shunmugpandi agree that a lot of work is to be done.

“Science is a process and we are not saying that the satellite product we have made is that all and the end are all the answers to understand where the right whales are,” Michel says. “We are just trying to provide an additional information that can be useful for the story and can be useful for people.”