Field Studies
From deployment to defensible data
Imaging workflows built for the field.
Pelagia supports pelagic imaging across the full range of research operations—from real-time interpretation during acquisition to processing accumulated collections after a campaign. It is designed to scale from focused laboratory and pilot datasets to continuous, multi-camera surveys producing hundreds of terabytes.
Pelagia’s development is grounded in shadowgraph imagery produced by ISIIS-DPI plankton cameras, but its workflow is not defined by a single instrument. By organizing imagery together with acquisition context, environmental observations, processing history, and scientific review, Pelagia can be adapted to different imaging platforms, deployment strategies, and research questions.
One workflow, different scales
Meet each program where it operates.
Field imaging programs differ in duration, acquisition rate, platform, staffing, and scientific goals. Pelagia provides a common path from source imagery to reviewable observations without requiring every project to operate at the same scale.
Real-time operations
Monitor incoming imagery, processing status, and biological observations while sampling is underway.
Focused collections
Work with benchtop imagery, reference libraries, pilot deployments, and targeted experiments without survey-scale infrastructure.
Sustained surveys
Process continuous or repeated observations from towed vehicles, profilers, moorings, and other high-volume platforms.
Accumulated archives
Apply transparent, repeatable processing and review to collections acquired before Pelagia was deployed.
Platform adaptable
The instrument changes. The scientific workflow remains recognizable.
Pelagia’s strongest demonstrated fit is high-volume shadowgraph imagery from ISIIS-DPI plankton cameras, but its underlying workflow extends beyond that instrument family. Towed line-scan systems, area-scan cameras, profilers, stationary observatories, benchtop imagers, and other platforms all produce variations of the same operational problem.
Preserve the source observation. Connect it to time, position, instrument state, and environmental context. Identify useful targets. Review results. Create defensible data products. Pelagia provides a common environment for that work while allowing instrument-specific acquisition details and processing methods to remain explicit.
Experience behind the workflow
Designed by people who understand field imaging.
Pelagia draws on experience across instrument engineering, deployment, scientific operations, plankton ecology, high-throughput computing, and image review.
Bellamare brings more than two decades of oceanographic engineering and deployment experience. Cedric Guigand has supported more than 70 scientific missions, helping ground Pelagia in the practical realities of integration, shipboard operations, changing configurations, and long-term system support.
Adam and his collaborators have applied in situ imaging across continental shelf seas, laboratory studies, and mesocosm experiments. That work connects imaging systems to the ecological questions, validation practices, and spatial scales they are meant to address.
Icy Seas contributes direct experience operating DPI-3 in the Northern Gulf of Alaska, managing imagery from its three ISIIS-DPI plankton cameras, developing processing and classification workflows, and turning high-volume observations into analysis-ready records.
Before, during, and after
Designed to facilitate fieldwork—not only post-process it.
Before deployment
Define imagery sources, metadata, processing methods, labels, review needs, and expected outputs before acquisition begins.
During acquisition
Monitor image streams and processing, identify operational problems, and begin biological interpretation while sampling continues.
After recovery
Resume processing, conduct scientific review, refine methods, and export traceable products for analysis and publication.
Featured field study
Northern Gulf of Alaska: DPI-3
DPI-3 is a Bellamare-built undulating towed vehicle fitted with three ISIIS-DPI plankton cameras and a suite of oceanographic instruments. Its sustained transects through a productive subarctic ecosystem demonstrate Pelagia’s foundation in field operations, environmental-data integration, machine-learning classification, scientific review, and analysis-ready export.
Bring us the instrument, deployment, or collection.
Whether the need is real-time interpretation, a focused pilot, a sustained observing program, or an existing archive, we can help define a practical path from imagery to defensible observations.