EVALUATING APPLICATIONS FOR BIOLUMINESCENCE DETECTION

This effort will develop methods for the field evaluation of the bioluminescent response of marine organisms disturbed by objects moving through the water. The approach ties comprehensive biological and environmental measurements to a previously developed bio-physical model which predicts signal brightness and distribution by combining biota charactersitics (concentration, flasch characteristics) with a mathematical description of the turbulent wakes of a vareity of objects (surface and underwater vehicles, swimmers, etc.), including the important processes of depletion and entrainment. Radiative transport, camera effects and water surface blurring are also modeled. In Phase I, cultured bioluminescent organisms (Preidinium bahamense) will be used in the lab to validate the model for various biological conditions using a well-characterized bathyphotometer (USCB's HIDEX). Intensified video imagery will also be used to evaluate an underwater jet as an easily deployed means of generating a well known turbulent flow field and to characterize signals generated by natural swimmers (e.g., fish). The video system emulates a full-scale detection system to be deployed in Phase II in a harbor on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico. Phase II will extend the analysis to evaluating the detectability of arbitrary objects as they traverse an instrumented test section.