"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."
The PI?s request funds to acquire five Environmental Sample Processors (ESPs) and supporting mooring and communications hardware to further their research activities and foster collaborations. The ESP?s will be deployed together in an array configuration to obtain real-time data on a wide range of microorganisms and their metabolites. For many years, this has been a distant dream, but that dream is now close to reality with the development and commercialization of the Environmental Sample Processor (ESP) that is the centerpiece of this proposal. The ESP can be deployed subsurface for months at a time. It collects and processes water samples, identifies and enumerates harmful algal bloom (HAB) species, pathogens, and other microorganisms as well as the concentration of specific metabolites such as algal toxins, and relays the data to shore. To foster greater flexibility, the ESP has been designed with a microfluidic block which allows analytical modules of different types (e.g., quantitative PCR) to be placed downstream of the water processing core. A wide variety of organisms and chemicals of interest to science and society can be analyzed over time scales that are not otherwise possible, all in automated fashion.
Broader Impacts
The potential broader impacts include: educational and outreach benefits from numerous undergraduates, graduate students, post docs, technical staff, and senior faculty working with the ESPs through various projects; various summer internship programs provided by WHOI and Biosecurity, Inc. for undergraduates including minority students; Monterey Bay Aquarium has included the ESP in a program that runs twice a day reaching almost 300,000 people a year; Volunteer phytoplankton researchers from 11 different states will be exposed to the ESP at various training workshops; scientifically, the placement of more ESP's into the ocean and eventually onto mobile platforms will give us the potential to inform and drive adaptive sampling in the way that CTD measurements do now; testing and establishing ESP technology will not only further the proposed research but also contribute to commercial interests that manufacture and sell advanced scientific instrumentation. As the technology is proven, other research groups will seek to incorporate it, and demand for the same or similar instruments will grow; many of the enabled/enhanced projects (research and educational) supported by this proposal are multi-investigator, and even multi-institutional, in nature and would further increase networking and partnering among relevant research groups.
A number of naturally occurring water borne microorganisms are harmful to humans and wildlife. They may appear seasonally or sporadically, but often the exact timing of their occurrence is difficult or impossible to predict accurately. For this reason it is very desirable, and indeed in some cases mandated by state or federal laws, to survey waters for harmful species to gain knowledge of their abundance, distribution, and movement for the purposes of protecting the public and natural resources. In an ideal world this would result in something like a weather forecast – a map that reveals "hot spots" of activity and trends to assist resource managers, public health officials and the general public in their decision-making. Developing such a picture is currently very challenging and not always possible for all potential threats. Often there is a need to collect samples of water from various locations that then must be subjected to sophisticated laboratory tests to reveal the organism or substance of concern. The logistics of getting and then testing those samples limits the number of locations that can be monitored. Moreover, it can sometimes take days or longer to evaluate samples for harmful organisms, which reduces the value of data for informing timely decision-making. This project was aimed at acquiring a new, field-deployable device that automates sample collection and testing – a "laboratory in a can". This device is known as the Environmental Sample Processor, or ESP. Results of the tests conducted by the ESP are transmitted by radio or cell phone from remote locations so that the full cycle of testing – from sample collection to analysis – is done without human involvement. Results of the tests can be accessed via the Internet. The objective of this project was to acquire a small fleet of these machines and evaluate them in the context of detecting toxic "red tide" algae that occur in the Northeastern U.S. and elsewhere in the world. These machines must be stationed in the ocean for extended periods, and operate without human intervention. Five ESPs, three mooring systems, and a range of other environmental sensors for measuring basic water properties like temperature, salinity, etc., were acquired. Capabilities to detect both algal species and their toxins on the ESP were developed.The ESP systems have been calibrated and are currently being deployed in the Gulf of Maine. Yet another important outcome is that an engineering and oceanographic team has been established that now has experience and capabilities in how to deploy and operate this new class of environmental sensor. Only about two dozen of these machines are currently available throughout the world. This acquisition of five machines is a significant step forward in realizing an operational, ocean health-related early warning system. The experience gained using the fleet of these devices will be invaluable for informing future developments that make ESP-type measurements easier, more affordable, and more widely available.
