SAMS PhD student Gary Groves and Gregg Arthur of UHI Shetland prepare the IFCB for deployment
SAMS
A team from UHI partners SAMS and UHI Shetland, with Scottish Sea Farms collaboration, has developed the Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB), a hi-tech underwater device that scans water samples for potentially dangerous algae blooms.
The IFCB has been operational for over a year at a Scottish Sea Farms site in Shetland and it is the first time that this kind of technology has been deployed at a working fish farm anywhere in Europe.
Using lasers and cameras, this tool photographs microscopic, single-celled phytoplankton in the water. Subsequently, these images are analyzed by the research team. The almost instantaneous results allow for the early identification of potentially harmful algae.
Regarding this, Project leader Prof Keith Davidson of SAMS explained: "It is notoriously difficult to predict when an algal bloom will occur, given the various environmental factors involved in its formation. The more warning we can give fish and shellfish farmers, the better the chance they have of mitigating the impact."
SAMS PhD student Gary Groves is developing the Artificial Intelligence (AI) capability of the IFCB to improve its identification abilities. His work is funded by The Data Lab and the Scottish Government’s Marine Directorate.
The IFCB has already photographed phytoplankton around the clock at 20-minute intervals and has identified trends in the presence of phytoplankton from more than 38 million images taken.
Researchers now hope that the IFCB observations, funded by the Sustainable Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC), will help them better understand seasonal trends in harmful phytoplankton blooms.
"It’s already showing us rapid changes over a day that we’ve never seen before. Traditional sampling methods use fixatives to preserve the sample for analysis but that can damage the cell. Being able to see live samples shows us the structure of the cell as it’s meant to be," confirmed Davidson.
Additionally, Scottish Sea Farms Head of Fish Health & Welfare Dr Ralph Bickerdike noted: "Already, we’ve been able to glean invaluable information on the real-time composition of harmful algae – information that simply wasn’t available before the IFCB – allowing us to deploy mitigation measures in the event of a bloom and safeguard the wellbeing of our salmon."