A project has been initiated to determine the feasibility of developing a "complete airborne remote sensing system" for rapidly mapping high concentration patches of bio-luminescent organisms in the world's oceans. Conceptually, this system would be composed of a laser illuminator to induce bioluminescence and a low light level image intensifier for detection of light. Our initial laboratory measurements consisted of using a 2 Joule flash lamp pulsed optical dye laser to excite bioluminescence in the marine dinoflagellate Pyrocystis lunula at ambient temperature using Rhodamine 6G as the lasing dye (585 nm) and a laser pulse width of 1 μ sec. After a latency period of 15-20 msec, the bioluminescence maximum occurred in the blue (480 nm is the wavelength maximum for most dinoflagellate bioluminescence) with the peaking occurring approximately 65 msecs after the laser pulse. Planned experiments will investigate the effect of different excitation wavelengths and energies at various temperatures and salinities of the cultures.

Date Published: 30 December 1981
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 0288, Los Alamos Conf on Optics '81, (30 December 1981); doi: 10.1117/12.932053

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0288:
Los Alamos Conf on Optics '81
Donald H. Liebenberg, Editor(s)