I’ve been fortunate to meet some really interesting folks related to marine sciences in Port Townsend. Our town is on a peninsula (Quimper) extending from a peninsula (Olympic) and we are surrounded by the beauty of the ocean. Through some friends that are retired marine biologists I’ve been able to help with a number of tech adjacent marine sciences projects. Much of this work has some connection to the wonderful PT Marine Sciences Center. I am not a biologist, but I do enjoy supporting the work where possible with good tech. I love spending time on the ocean and you can’t do that without being totally in awe of the abundance of life around us.
Here are some of the projects I’ve been helping with:
kduPro - I’ve been re-writing the firmware for this open source underwater spectral analysis tool. Studying the spectrum of light that reaches different depths can tell you a lot about plankton in the water column. I’ve upgraded the RGB light sensor to a 11 channel spectral analyser (as7341). I’ve improved the way the device is configured and I’m working on adding wifi support to be able to check progress and offload data without having to take the device out of its sealed container.
For visualizing the kduPro data, I’ve created a repository for data and Jupyter Notebooks that process the data.
Planktoscope - I’ve been helping set up a loaned Planktoscope to photograph and identify local plankton. I’ve gotten to participate in several of the plankton collection efforts that my friends are doing weekly. This plankton analysis is part of the shellfish biotoxin monitoring effort.
Port Townsend’s Orcasound.net’s hydrophone installation. I’m assisting a retired engineer that worked on APL’s Cabled Array project of the coast of Oregon. I get to hear a lot of great engineering stories! The hydrophone installation has been in place for many years at the PT Marine Sciences Center and is in need of some maintenance. We’ve relocated the computer that processes the incoming hydrophone data and rewired the public address system that can play the nearby hydrophones. We are also creating a new control system for turning on the PA system when visitors press a button outside the building.