NWA - Chapter 5

NEW TECHNOLOGY

Recommendations have been made in previous sections regarding the requirements for technology which would be considered specifically important to the study of the various taxonomic groups: fish, holozooplankton and meroplankton. Here we make general recommendations on certain technologies that could be profitably used by multiple disciplines:

Development and application of biochemical techniques which identify physiological and behavioral properties of organisms, and which (1) can be applied to small sample sizes, (2) can provide for rapid sample processing, and (3) may be taken to sea;
Improvement on aspects of acoustic technology as applied to small particle sizes, requiring (1) improved theoretical models, (2) improved hardware which is standardized and more readily available, (3) improved software for handling high data rates and large data sets, and (4) a better understanding of the biological meaning of the data;
Development of instrumentation which is capable of (1) identifying and enumerating organisms in the plankton, whether by size, species or biochemical characteristics, and (2) which can be deployed to collect data continuously or synoptically.

We specifically endorse the following initiatives to speed development in these areas:

Biotechnology Workshops:
A small group of molecular biologists/biochemists should meet with an equal number of biological oceanographers to discuss the most promising techniques for the most pressing oceanographic problems. From this meeting, a series of short courses on techniques and ideas might be developed. Such courses would be advertised and open to the community at large. Biological oceanographers who learn to apply these new techniques will be in a much better position to forge collaborations and proposals to work with appropriate biochemists/molecular biologists on relevant GLOBEC problems.
Technology Workshops:
A small group of engineers/technologists should meet with an equal number of biological oceanographers to discuss the most promising techniques for the most pressing oceanographic sampling problems. From this meeting, a series of workshops will be convened with the specific purpose of generating design criteria required to improve or develop high data rate sampling instruments. The design criteria will be used as the basis for Announcements of Opportunity or initiatives by funding agencies committed to providing improved technological capability to GLOBEC. Technologies which have been discussed at this writing include (1) acoustics, (2) optics, and (3) image analysis.