TOMSK, December 2. /TASS/. A holographic camera to examine plankton in the habitat was installed on an ice floe in the Arctic, the Tomsk State University's press service told TASS, adding the camera would monitor and transmit data to scientists for further ecology research.

Earlier, the university's first deputy chancellor, Viktor Demin, told TASS that scientists had invented an underwater digital holographic camera to study plankton, and further on it became the underwater plankton observatory's heart. According to him, plankton's behavioral reactions point to water pollution at the earliest stage, since during feeding plankton filters large amounts of water and thus reacts to the slightest contamination.

"The North Pole - 42 ice-resistant self-propelled platform with our camera on board has frozen into the ice and will be drifting across the Arctic Ocean," the press service quoted him as saying. "Our scientists, together with polar scientists, will analyze obtained data on Arctic plankton. We are aware of cameras of the kind in the world, but we are dealing here with the world's first Arctic under-ice use of an ice bio-indication station based on an immersive digital holographic camera."

Presently, the station is in the Arctic Ocean. The scientists have prepared the equipment, performed necessary calibration, tested the equipment in the water and processed holograms. They have obtained first plankton specifications.

Initial results

So far, the team has not managed to transmit all obtained data to the mainland, but anyway the team communicates constantly and reports certain small median results. For example, an image formed by digital reconstruction of a hologram during the drift. Having processed the holographic data, specialists could determine a preliminary "feeding schedule" for the polar plankton.

"It is a real miracle of the 21st century to observe the plankton's biorhythm and feeding," the press service quoted the university's senior researcher Igor Polovtsev as saying. "The thing is - the polar plankton feeds once a day strictly at a certain time, but no one knows about that time or how they are synchronized in a huge number of individuals. We continue the work looking forward to successful results."

The camera operation and data processing center are located in Krasnodar, he added. According to the deputy chancellor, information obtained during the expedition will be available to teams of opticians, biologists, radio-physicists, ecologists with a time delay of just one day.

About the university's project on ice floe

The TGU (Tomsk State University) on Ice Floe Project is implemented under the university's strategic project Global Earth Changes: Climate, Ecology, Quality of Life, which is supported by the Priority 2030 federal program for strategic academic leadership.

Key areas under the Global Earth Changes: Climate, Ecology, Quality of Life project are: a carbon balance model in North Asia, including all ecosystems and northern territories: permafrost, wetlands, catchments of the great Siberian rivers - the Yenisei, the Ob, the Lena and others, coastal zone, shelf of Russia's Arctic seas.