ABSTRACT
The Coastal Zone Color Scanner, which infers patches of photosynthetic particles from reflectance/water color, has demonstrated the enormity of the challenge. This chapter focuses on a limited size group including bacteria, cyanobacteria, prochlorophytes, and other phytoplankton cells, and other particles spanning 0.2 to 200 µm in diameter. One of the amazing things about living microscopic particles is their diversity in size and shape. At sea, ocean biologists need instrumentation that at least matches the capability of data sampling and handling of their chemical and physical colleagues, and this instrumentation must encompass measurement of all particle sizes. A non-optical measurement found highly useful for oceanography is so-called particle impedance volume. A major advance in particle analysis is the technique called flow cytometry. The role of submicron particles in the sea awaits clarification. One might argue that suspended sediments are nuisance particles in that they reduce light penetration without inducing dynamic biological responses.
