Find fluorescing coral recruits - in the DAYTIME!

The new NightSea FL5000 FLASH Light^TM was developed under NOAA funding to create improved tools for coral recruitment research. The general fluorescence technique has already been demonstrated (see the coral recruitment page on this site), but with previous lights, like the BlueStar, you needed to dive at night or work very hard to create dark conditions during the day. Night diving has a number of disadvantages, including fatigue, boating and diving safety, cutting into family time, and more. In some instances night diving is entirely out of the question due to local above-water and underwater safety considerations.

The FL5000 solves this problem with its unique blinking mode. It capitalizes on the fact that our brains are highly adapted to detect motion in the visual field. Motion can be actual motion, or it can be the appearance of motion due to an intermittent light source. That's why so many warning lights blink.

The FL5000 has two high intensity LEDs and two operating modes. Turn the switch one way and you have a high intensity (brighter than the BlueStar) blue light, turn it the other and you have the high intensity blinking light. When you use it in the daytime, scan the surface with the blinking light. The BlueBlock Filter Visor blocks all of the reflected blue light, so anything that is blinking, no matter how slightly, is fluorescent. Once you have spotted the subject you can then switch over to the steady light for a closer look.

This works. In the course of developing and testing the light numerous dives in depths as shallow as 2 meters were made in the high-brightness hours (10 - 2) on sunny days. The blinking fluorescence cannot compete with direct full sun, but all it took was using a hand to create a little shade on the area to be inspected and very small corals could be found easily. Several of the lights are already in use in the coral research community, and the users are reporting back that it works very well for them. You could scan settlement tiles just as easily as you could scan natural surfaces.

If you are in the businees of finding small targets, you might be interested in NightSea's other coral recruitment tools, including the Modular Underwater Magnifier and the fluorescent scale bars, also developed under NOAA funding.

Each FL5000 comes with a BlueBlock Filter Visor and a Mask Strap Wrapper.

BlueBlock Filter Visor Outside-the-mask filter visor to block the reflected blue light	Mask Strap Wrapper Captures the filter visor to your mask strap so that it won't get lost

Specifications

Battery: 4 C-cell
Bulb type: Two high intensity 3W LED
Burn time: >10 hours at full power
LED lamp life: >10,000 hours
Depth rating: 500 feet (300 m)
Dimensions: 5" (12.7 cm) long x 3" (7.6 cm) diameter (excluding pistol grip)