Most plankton are invisible to the naked eye or hard to see because they are transparent, so to catch them we use a special net with fine mesh. It is called a plankton net. They look like oversized windsocks that are pulled behind a boat, they function like strainers and come in a variety of diameters and mesh sizes depending on which plankton you are interested in. I used a 80 µm mesh in today’s tow for catching mostly zooplankton. For contrast, the diameter of a typical human hair measures 100 µm across.
Here are photos of live plankton I collected at the marine lab today. Because of their size, I used a dissecting microscope to observe and draw them. I spotted a crab larva—this life stage is called a zoea. Many coral reef inhabitants begin life as planktonic larvae—they undergo metmorphosis to become adults, and the two phases often look completely different, much like the caterpillar and the butterfly.