New underwater camera monitors plankton in Lake Zug
Published: Wednesday, Jun 5th 2024, 09:51
Back to Live Feed
An underwater camera has been installed in Lake Zug to monitor microorganisms. Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) are using the camera to gain important insights into the water quality of the lake.
The Aquascope underwater camera in Lake Zug is the second permanent measuring station for plankton in Swiss waters, as Eawag and the Canton of Zug announced on Wednesday. The first collects data in Lake Greifen in the canton of Zurich.
The underwater microscope takes images of free-floating particles in the water at defined intervals. The data is then transmitted to a computer in real time, automatically analyzed and evaluated.
"By regularly monitoring the plankton, we can better recognize changes in Lake Zug and react to them more quickly," said Martin Ziegler, Head of the Cantonal Office for Forests and Wildlife, in the press release.
Fluctuations in fish stocks
Plankton is an indicator of the health of bodies of water. Plankton refers to animal and plant organisms such as tiny crustaceans and small algae that float in the water. If the population or composition of plankton changes, this can have a major impact on the lake ecosystem and thus also on the fish population, as Eawag explained.
According to the press release, the catch figures for whitefish, an important fish species for professional fishermen, fluctuate greatly in Lake Zug. The concentration of blue-green algae also changes over the course of the year. The analyses should now provide insights into this.
©Keystone/SDA
English 
German 
French 
Spanish 
Arabic