Continuous monitoring technologies of plankton and suspended particulate matter

Technologies of microscopic imaging of suspended participate matter (SPM) have been developed. To evaluate material transport in the ocean and ecosystem dynamics, composition of SPM and their number density and sizes should be evaluated. To identify particles, microscopic observation is most reliable method, but it was very difficult to automate observation process. For smaller organic material such as cell, flowcytometric imaging system has been well established in medicine e.g. blood cell analyzer. Here we present a novel imaging system for SPM for the studies of ocean science. Size range of particles can be imaged with our system is from ten micrometers to several millimeters in diameter. In this range, constituents of SPM are large phytoplankton (diatom), zooplankton, detritus and inorganic material. Therefore, our system can be applied to monitor ecosystem and SPM transport in the ocean.