ZOOVIS-DEEP high-resolution zooplankton and marine snow surveys, Chesapeake Bay, July 2011

In July, 2011 a research cruise was conducted to test the ZOOVIS-DEEP plankton imaging system. The cruise was conducted in the Chesapeake Bay aboard the RV Rachel Carson. ZOOVIS-DEEP is a self-contained camera system that is capable of documenting the composition of plankton and particles in the water column within a large image volume (100 ml) at high rates (15 Hz). This test cruise yielded data on the taxonomic composition of meso and macrozooplankton, particularly fragile, transparent, gelatinous organisms such at medusae and ctenophores, which are not effectively quantified by traditional samplers such as nets. This dataset supports the paper: Bi, H., Cook, S., Yu, H., Benfield, M. C., & Houde, E. D. (2013). Deployment of an imaging system to investigate fine-scale spatial distribution of early life stages of the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi in Chesapeake Bay. Journal of Plankton Research, 35(2), 270–280.