Mission Plan
Mission Plan

Education
Education

Geology: Dive Sites
Geology: Dive Sites

Underwater Images
Underwater Imaging

Animal Capture-the Bio Box
Animal Capture

polarization vision
Polarization Vision

Eye in the Sea
Eye-in-the-Sea

Fluorescence
Fluorescence

Explorers
Explorers

Research Technician Karen Konzen at the microscope specially designed to view fluorescence

Research Technician Karen Konzen at the microscope specially designed to view fluorescence. Click image for larger view.


Shine On!

August 24, 2005

By Karen Konzen
Research Assistant
University of Florida

Latitude: 29° 09.286' N
Longitude: 88° 00.857' W

As Dr. Mikhail Matz’s Research Assistant on this exploration, my role is to examine  fluorescence in marine organisms – wherever we can find it, whenever the opportunity arises. Already, with not even half of the expedition completed, we have found fluorescent creatures from the surface all the way to depths of 1,800 feet, ranging in size from plankton to a shark about a meter in length.
camcorder icon Watch video taken on Aug 22.

Research Technician Karen Konzen at the microscope specially designed to view fluorescence

Green fluorescing eyebrow of a 5 cm. frogfish collected at 1,800 ft. deep. Click image for larger view.


In order to fluoresce, an organism must be able to produce special proteins that can absorb energy from waves of light that hit them and re-emit it at a different wavelength as fluorescent color.  Since there is no light in the deep ocean, why do organisms such as the zooanthid polyps we collected the other day (see Aug 22 daily log) have these proteins? Their fluorescence is incredibly bright when we view them in the right light on board the ship, but how do they use this ability while living at 1,800 feet below the surface?

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Since we were not scheduled to dive in the sub today, we took the opportunity to examine organisms collected with researcher Dr. Jon Cohen’s plankton tow net to see if we could find any fluorescence among the myriad of tiny little planktonic critters.   We found a lot!  We worked until after midnight measuring and photographing several very cool fluorescent copepods, jellyfish and other organisms we will have to wait to identify when we return to shore.  Some of the best we found were:

Planktonic copepod, most likely Microsetella sp., with green and yellow fluorescence.

Planktonic copepod, most likely Microsetella sp., with green and yellow fluorescence. Click image for larger view.


Unidentified jelly with algae which appears as red balls.

Unidentified jelly with algae which appears as red balls. Click image for larger view.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A couple days before, we found fluorescent shrimp in clumps of sargassum we caught in a dip net while they floated by the ship.  We found hundreds of 5-10 mm. shrimp of at least three different species. One is pictured in Dr. Matz’s Aug 22 log entry. As we saw with the copepods, the cyan, yellow, and/or green fluorescent patterns on these shrimp are highly variable, appearing as spots right behind the eyes, on the joints of the legs, as stripes of dots over their bodies and for some even the eyes themselves glow.

We don’t yet know why we see such variability.  Is an animals’ color pattern dependent on species, sex, life stage, different ways of attracting dinner, or…..??  It is also not much good being able to fluoresce if no one can see you doing it. So we are also interested in learning if some organisms can see the fluorescence of those around them.

Man, what an interesting bunch questions to search for answers to. What beautiful and amazing thing to see and discover.  This is a really cool job!