It can be deployed in conjuction with net sampling systems, on remotely operated vehicles, or by itself. When the OPC is coupled with other sensors as a single deployable instrument package, it can provide reasonably detailed spatial resolution of the interaction between plankton and the physical structure of their habitat. It is commercially available and represents one of the more mature optical instruments available for the assessment of zooplankton biomass and distribution. It is not however, in its commercially available form, capable of imaging individual zooplankton, and thus is somewhat limited in its ability to define the taxonomic structure of zooplankton assemblages. It is adaptable for towing as part of an undulating vehicle, and a moored version is under development.
Distribution implies abundance measurements in up to three dimensions and through time.
To accomplish this, various instruments employing acoustics and optics have been developed. However, as discussed below, a shortcoming of current acoustical instruments is their general inability to positively identify acoustic targets. The data can be immediately processed and displayed. Four video cameras are synchronized at 60 frames sec-1 to a red strobe light positioned 1 meter away. The field of view of each camera is adjustable from 0.5 to 10 cm, at 10 to 300 microns resolution, respectively, with corresponding depths of field of 4 to 20 cm.