At the crack of dawn I was out on the water scouting an ideal patch of Sargassum weed off of Key Largo, Florida. Finally, I came across an ideal patch in 845 feet of 83.3°F water at the coordinates 24° 57' 15" N and 80° 11' 5" W. I deployed my Biocube in the patch of Sargassum and took underwater footage using a GoPro camera. After a few hours, to allow the Sargassum and animals to settle, I retrieved my Biocube and removed my one cubic foot sample. Then I made my way back to shore to begin. Before I started, I set up a small tank with an oxygenator and my sample. I filmed the sample in the tank for roughly ten minutes in order to create a virtual aquarium in the later stages of my project. The next step was to morpho-sort the specimens. To clarify, morpho-sorting is a way of putting the specimens in groups depending on their physical appearance. After several hours of morpho-sorting it was time to photograph a representative for each species. In the photographing process my G-12 Cannon Powershot was giving me difficulties, so I switched over to a macro Olloclip lens for my iPhone. Surprisingly, the Olloclip worked much better and produced high quality images of the tiny specimens. After all of the photographing was over, I released the organisms into the water. By the end of the day I had twenty four species, not including what was on the GoPro underwater footage.
*Note: This Biocube was not within state waters, so no licensing was necessary
*Note: This Biocube was not within state waters, so no licensing was necessary