This week I finished the report on the radiometer data we collected. However I will be revising it with some new calculations soon. I have done a couple wavelength comparisons to look at patterns in the reflected spectra. The following table shows the calculation I have done.




Calculation               Mean         Standard Deviation

(550/500)                2.2789       0.2471

(550-500)               0.0619       0.0172

((550-500)/50)        1.2e-3       3.4e-4



The calculations in the above table only include the 12 light and dark radiometer readings and no data from the DiveSpec. DiveSpec data will be included after I add a couple lines to the script that performs these calculations. I will add all of this data to the paper next week. I was also considering fitting a parabola through some of reflectance spectra. In the DiveSpec data, and to a lesser extent in the dive light illuminated radiometer spectra, there is a nice curve that looks like the top of a parabola. I don’t know if this is common practice but a quadratic equation could be calculated between 500-675 based on the average of all the spectra. Then when looking at spectra of an unknown object, a quadratic best fit line could be run through 500-675. Then it can be identified as Didemnum or not, depending on how far this line deviates from the previous parabola we have calculated based on our field work. Just for reference look at the following graph.

From wavelengths 500 to 675 the spectra looks like a nice parabola. This curve isn’t so obvious in the Satlantic radiometer data, but it may be worth a shot…

I have been putting the finishing touches on my website/program this week. I say ‘website/program’ because what I am really doing is writing a program that produces a website. I am doing all the work in matlab and hardly writing any html. It would be best to have the program run automatically every day or two, but I’m not sure how to do this. I found out how to use colored scatter plots to give a big picture view of the float profiles. I was able to plot all profiles done by float 4738 using a colored scatter plot method. Here is an example of two of the graphs that will be on the site.

I will fix the dates and the positions of the color bar label next week. I like these graphs because they are very visual, these are an alternative to the three dimensional graphs I wanted to add last week. These graph plot three variable, just like the three dimensional graphs I wanted. I have also added links at the bottom of the page that allow visitors to look at plots of individual profiles. I have incorporated this all into my website program. Float 4738 is the only float that requires updating. However, I was initially building a program to update information on three floats. I spent a good amount of time revamping the program to run more efficiently. Originally every time the program updated the website, it started from scratch. It would process information from the first profile to the most recent. I have modified it so it saves past data in .mat an .fig files so when new profiles are available, it appends them onto the existing data. This makes much more sense and allows the program to run faster.

Float 6959 is no longer sending data, however it is sending its location. So I took it upon myself to write up a function to pull the location out of the partial files it sending. I have made 6959’s location part of the site updating program. So, even though we are not getting data we can still keep tabs on its location.

I will most likely include data from float 0005 and 0015 on the site, but have not added them yet. I also don’t have the routines for reading float 6810’s data. All three of these floats should be easy to add to the site after I compile the data. None of these floats will require to be updated by the program, so I don’t have to write any matlab code for these floats.

Next week I will polish up the website and update the paper with new information. Hopefully I will be able to collect some data in the lab next week as well. Our light source should be here next week; we can look at the reflected spectra of the light in the lab. Also, I am curious about the fluorescence function on the DiveSpec. I said in the paper that the spike at 550 could have been caused the LEDs of the DiveSpec. I am not sure how the blue light in the DiveSpec is produced. Is there a filter over white LEDs that only allows blue light through? If so, it’s possible that this does not stop ALL of the white light and there is still enough to see a small peak at 550. That is why I am hesitant to say that the peak at 550 is caused by fluorescence. Next week in the lab I will take a fluorescence spectrum of something that we know does not fluoresce and see if the peak still appears. Farther down the road, I look forward to going back to DMC to collect data!

See you next week