Day 3 in Thonon

A lot of progress was made today. I readied computers for our project by clearing up disk space and defragmenting the disks. It is something acousticians like yours truly often do. Jean then took me around INRA to introduce (or reintroduce) me to staff and students. I got some kisses and was greeted warmly. Such a friendly group. I'm committed to learning names, but I ask for patience.

Orlane, Jean & I met to discuss collection of zooplankton with nets. Leslie will  identify, count, and size a sub sample. Leslie has an important, mission critical, job to perform.  We will be collecting paired net tows and acoustic collections to correlate back scattering levels with zooplankton biomass. I hope it works. There is a growing body of scientific literature showing proof of concept in freshwater lakes. More on this later.

We got a lot of help today from Jean Christophe. Like Leslie he will be critical to our success. He spent his day readying a platform we will use to deploy 5 transducers having the following frequencies 38-, 70-, 120-, 200- & 420-kHz. Why so many? That can be learned by reading future posts! The platform will attach to a pole which we will attach to a boat. Here is what it looks like.

The platform will need to be cut by a machinist to a smaller size and something like 30+ holes will need to be drilled so we can bolt the transducers to the platform (Jean-Christophe has a big job). When we deploy the transducers they will be aimed towards the lakebed (in the photo they are aimed towards the heavens). 

Here Jean-Christophe & Jean discuss the platform. I hope my videos are working, yes?