Foldscoping from a boat – hello from NZ

Jul 07, 2017 • 7:40 PM UTC

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Microorganisms

Manu Prakash

I am a faculty at Stanford and run the Prakash Lab at Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. Foldscope community is at the heart of our Frugal Science movement - and I can not tell you how proud I am of this community and grassroots movement. Find our work here: http://prakashlab.stanford.edu

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I just started a collaboration with Plankton Planet; bringing microscopy on sail boats around the world. An incredible world of plankton – in every drop of the ocean. I will write more about this new work soon; but here is a few snapshots of what it felt like.

To get access to the plankton, you take a Plankton net at 2-3 knot speed and pull the net behind the boat for 15min. This is a quick little trick to get millions of plankton which can be imaged for a long time.

And here is a quick look at the incredible plankton we caught in our nets.

I will be writing individual posts on all the specific diatoms, copepods, dinoflagellate.. that were in our nets – but wanted to share this quickly with foldscope community. As you ID anything you see here; please post a comment below.
Cheers
Manu
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