Dr
Richard Kirby, Royal Society Research Fellow at Plymouth University and
best-selling author with his book 'Ocean Drifters', is enjoying a summer of
success helped by Carl Zeiss.
His image of the Planktonic larval stage of the starfish Luidia sarsi was
selected by the Royal Photographic Society for their International Images for
Science Exhibition 2011, which opened in Bath on September 2nd. This follows
his images appearing on the windows of Selfridges for their 'Project Ocean'
event and his star attraction display at the Royal Society Summer Exhibitions
with 'Ocean Drifters - a secret world beneath the waves'. This 360° film,
narrated by wildlife legend Sir David Attenborough FRS, shrinks audiences to
the size of a grain of sand to show plankton at 4,000 times their usual size.
In all cases the images were captured using Carl Zeiss microscopes. And,
audiences at the Ocean Drifters film, which was sponsored by Zeiss, were also
able to see live plankton samples under Carl Zeiss microscopes.
The exhibit is based on Richard Kirby's surprise best-selling book, Ocean
Drifters, which contains dozens of amazing micrographs of the beautiful
plankton. On the massive 360 degrees screen, the minute sea creatures appear as
four metre long monsters and highlight the abundance of life contained in the
top few feet of the world's oceans.
"Plankton are hugely important and I am very privileged to try and help
inform people about them," says Richard Kirby. "Go for a walk across
the South Downs and the chalk underneath your feet is the remains of plankton
deposited beneath the seas over 65 million years ago. It is plankton that give
the sea its distinctive smell - "sea air" - because certain
phytoplankton give off aromatic chemicals when they die. They are even
responsible for forming clouds, because the same chemicals when in the atmosphere
cause water droplets to form around them.
"The importance of plankton on a global scale is obvious when you realise
that they underpin all sea life, that 50 per cent of the world's photosynthesis
takes place in the surface of the sea, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere
into the oceans, and plankton play a central role in the global carbon
cycle."
To complete the summer of success, the book has just been released in the US by
Firefly.
For more information about Carl Zeiss visit
www.zeiss.co.uk
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