Development of a Marine Autonomous Remote Sampler (MARS)

Bathing water quality assessment is crucial for public health and environmental protection, but current culture-based approaches suffer from significant limitations, including time-consuming processes, sample transportation and delayed results. Our proposal seeks to advance our novel water testing device (Bacterisk+) that addresses these limitations, offering near real-time water quality assessment through an autonomous water sampling and testing device.

Water sampling is critically important for ensuring safety at bathing water sites of which there are 149 such sites across Devon and Cornwall alone. Undertaking the testing is a major task and only occurs on a weekly basis, providing very low resolution data. Coastal sewage pollution, in particular at bathing water sites, has attracted considerable publicity and is of major concern for human and environmental health as well as significant economic costs. The source of much coastal sewage pollution is likely to be from combined sewage overflows (CSOs) during heavy rainfall. The vast majority of sewage passing through the sewage treatment system, when CSOs are not utilised, is well treated. Use of CSOs is episodic and driven by rainfall, making infrequent water quality testing unreliable in accurately indicating when waters are safe to swim.

The proposed project, utilising the expertise at Molendotech for microbiology and assay development with the autonomy expertise at the University of Plymouth, will develop a Marine Autonomous Remote Sampler (MARS) that will interface our proven Bacterisk+ technology with an autonomous water collection system allowing water collection from the water column at 3 water depths, from near the seabed to the surface. Water will be automatically analysed by the BacterisK+ system and the data transmitted to a shore station using Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). BacterisK+ technology takes approximately 30 minutes to analyse a sample after collection. The system would allow water samples to be collected as frequently as every 30 minutes, providing near real-time analysis of water quality. Water sampling frequency would be programmable by the user.

The device to be produced in this project will autonomously collect water samples, process the samples and the digital data transmitted to a shore station via the GSM system. During routine operations data would be gathered autonomously thereby significantly reducing Carbon emissions, in comparison to a vessel based or manual sampling regime. The development of the autonomous water sampling and testing device in this project will therefore address major themes of marine autonomy, clean maritime and digital ocean technologies.