Future Directions in Bioluminescence Research

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ABSTRACT

Melding Biological and Physical Observations

Oscar Schofield¹, Paul Bissett², Mark A. Moline³, Scott Glenn¹

1. Coastal Ocean Observation Laboratory, IMCS, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
2. Florida Environmental Research Institute, 4807 Bayshore Blvd. Suite 101, Tampa, FL 33611
3. Biological Sciences Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA 93407

Existing observation networks on basin wide, coastal and estuarine scales offer for the first time the potential to quantify biophysical interactions across ecologically relevant regimes ranging from meters to thousands of kilometers. Such an array of complementary physical/biological activities exists in coastal observatories and modeling programs. These complement an already well-developed Navy capability in deep-ocean for regional forecasting based upon sophisticated climatologies.

These regional observatories will continue to develop forming a regional monitoring capability and will provide the framework for an adaptive sampling capability that can potentially span the scales between the deep and coastal ocean. This is critical to bioluminescence research which is highly variable in space and time. Also the bioluminescence potential is often the expression of numerous biotic interactions, which leads to dominance of specific species.

Recent advances in instrumentation, models may offer new tools to tackle these problems. Given this, this talk will focus on approaches that we believe show promise and provide critical examples of data from technology available today. Our focus will be on the Long Term Ecosystem Observatory (LEO-15) and the ongoing efforts to developing a biological ocean forecasting system.

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