The Phytoplankton Time Series at Port Aransas is part of the Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve (MANEER) program.

The images were captured using the Imaging FlowCytobot, an imaging-in-flow instrument that combines video and flow cytometric technology to capture high resolution (1 µm) images for plankton identification and to measure chlorophyll fluorescence associated with each image.  Organisms ranging from ~10 to >100 µm can be identified often to genus and, in some cases, to species.