FISHING FOR eDNA

In the spring of 2022, I worked with a Science Communication Fellow at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) to create this infographic about environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling. The icing on the cake was turning it into a simple interactive animation that was shared on MBARI’s website.

Traditional fisheries and watershed management methods have relied on staff collecting and counting species by hand. Measuring eDNA with remote sensors and ROVs provides an alternate toolkit that saves valuable time and resources. Autonomous sampling enables managers to collect data more frequently, and monitor rare and infrequent species that would otherwise be missed by traditional sampling. A future eDNA network has the potential to track native species such as endangered coho salmon and steelhead; invasive species such as striped bass and New Zealand mud snails; harmful algae blooms; and pollution in our nation’s waterways.

Here’s a low-res preview of the interactive, and some close-ups of the illustrations (tap to zoom).

Process

MBARI scientists provided reference photos of stream sampling and the autonomous sampling technology. I used Adobe Illustrator to render all of the art, data visualizations, and layout components. The originals were 100% vector and scalable without loss of resolution.

The simple interactive was created in Adobe Animate using layers from Illustrator.

Here’s some of my rough drafts, including a thumbnail sketch and a grayscale layout in Illustrator.