My PhD project is to advance the understanding of marine and freshwater ecosystems using machine vision and novel optical techniques. The project is a combination of the development of optical hardware for data collection and the development of machine learning algorithms for data analysis. My reserarch consists of several projects. The first focuses on how the air-water interface affects plankton vertical migration. This project consists of lab experiments and field testing. The second project involves designing an in-situ zooplankton imaging system aimed at imaging gelatinous zooplankton. The images are analysed using AI-driven detection and classification of the imaged plankton to deliver count data to the end user. The goal of this project is to improve the monitoring of gelatinous zooplankton in Swedish seas.