Early this week, I started compiling graphs and data from the MVCO visibility study. I am organizing this information so I can write a paper on what i found, or more realistically what i did not find. On Monday I ran a test to see if my data was matched correctly by comparing temperature recorded by the divers and by the 12 meter node. If the data is matched correctly they should be close to the same. The graph below shows the relationship.

As you can see they match up well. This gives me confidence that the matlab scripts i wrote were operating correctly. I will include this information in the paper.

The rest of the week has been spent either collecting or sorting radiometer data. All the data taken on Tuesday has been saved to my computer and organized using matlab.

Lets start with the Satlantic data taken on the second dive. With the Satlantic radiometer we logged data for 36 minutes, during this time the radiometer took 1294 light frames and 259 dark frames. 383 of the light frames had the lens cover on. That leaves us with 912 frames of usable data. I am still in the process of finding the best way to separate the spectralon plaque readings from readings of Didemnum and other objects. The plaque readings seem to fall into two categories, high reflectance and low reflectance. I'm assuming the high reflectance was when the dive light was in use. I can separate the brighter plaque readings easily but separating the rest of them is still in the works. Next week I will have some spectra from the second dive. Below is a picture of Didemnum taken on one of the dives.

The DiveSpec gave us surprisingly good results. On the first dive two usable spectra were taken with the DiveSpec. Afterwords spectra were taken of various organisms in the flowing seawater lab. The graph below shows some of the results.

When using the LED illumination of the DiveSpec, Didemnum produced a rather consistent reflectance spectra. The black lines are spectra taken while diving and the red lines are spectra taken in the flowing seawater lab.

Another characteristic of Didemnum we will have to look into is its ability to fluoresce. In the flowing seawater lab we used the DiveSpec to take one fluorescence reading of Didemnum. here are the results,

The spike at the beginning is blue light emitted by the blue LED's of the DiveSpec, however the small spike at 675 is not being emitted by the LED's. Its possible that Didemnum could fluoresce under certain conditions. In the future we will have to repeat this and see if we get similar results.

Also this week, Alina and I have been discussing the best way to get a picture of back scattered light off of suspended particles in water. We have come up with a few good ideas, and should be able to image only the back scattered light without the surface reflected light. In the lab I was able to eliminate all visible surface reflected light with Wayne's polarized lens. However, its my understanding that light reflecting off the particles will be polarized as well. So by using the polarized lens we may be eliminating a far amount of back scattered light. We will work this out and hopefully take the pictures next week.