Nano-sensitive biosensor instrument for water toxin screening within the aquaculture industry

With the world population increasing towards 9.6 billion, aquaculture needs be expanded to alleviate the growing global food crisis. That said, aquaculture expansion is currently inhibited by technological barriers in monitoring water quality. Enclosed inland farms require priority toxins to be monitored and controlled to maintain healthy fish stocks. At present, no sensors are available for field use, as a result there is reliance on lab-based analysis which has a lead-time of up to two weeks. As a result, it is impossible to record continuous data and trends, which are often required to understand the quality of the water to allow real time adjust avoiding catastrophic loss of fish stocks. A typical 50K ton capacity land based farm could lose 10% of annual production equating to 2.5 million fish lost at cost of £12.5 million. In UK & EU over 1.3 million tons of fish are produced annually with loses of around 260 million fish due to poor water quality; equating to losses of £1.3 billion annually. The proposed instrument will revolutionise the aquaculture industry worldwide, providing for the first time: (1) real-time early warnings of episodic events; (2) reduce sample collection and costly lab analysis; and (3) allow farms to expand their per capita quotas generating revenues/jobs - this will be a considerable step change for an industry where expansion is inhibited by water quality management.