Tara Oceans Expeditions - May 2011. dry lab o/b Tara: FlowCAM can distinguish and sort individuals and on the basis of their size and their aspect : large or small, more round or more elongated. In 200 ml of water there can be 1 to 10 thousands cells. The FlowCAM?s main attribute is a laser used to detect two pigments: chlorophyll and phycoerythrin which are present in red algae and some cyanobacteria. When an organism containing those pigments crosses the laser beam, it triggers a flash and the machine instantaneously takes a picture. Galapagos