ShellEye: Satellite-based water quality bulletins for shellfish farms to support management decisions

This project will use ocean-viewing satellites together with weather forecasts in order to help monitor the quality of water surrounding shellfish farms. These tools will help the shellfish farmers make decisions, for example when to harvest their crop to avoid contamination in nearby water.

The farming or cultivation of seafood (e.g. shellfish) termed 'aquaculture' is an important worldwide source of protein. As global populations continue to rise the need for aquaculture as an important source of food will only increase. So increasing aquaculture output will help to provide food security for future generations. So approaches to help ensure efficient and sustainable aquaculture farming (e.g. towards reducing farm costs and energy use, and ensuring supply) will clearly help the industry to expand to feed future populations.

Pollution events that reduce the quality of the water within an aquaculture farm, both from humans and naturally occurring, can significantly impact aquaculture farms. These events can cause the loss of stock (ie shellfish have to be disposed of), harvesting to stop (causing a loss in supply to the customer), illness or in extreme cases death (through humans eating contaminated food).

Water quality in and around the aquaculture farms in the UK and Europe are monitored using a series of tests based on collecting water samples and analyzing the flesh of the seafood being farmed. This sampling is carried out by government agencies. Due to financial constraints and complexity of this sampling, it is not possible to take samples everyday and there is a delay between the samples being collected and the results being given to the farmer. The farmers themselves often do not have any way of measuring the water quality within their own farms, so they have to rely on the monitoring provided by the agencies, even if it is sporadic and the results are delayed. Whereas up to date information on water quality would help farmers make decisions about when and how much to harvest. Information about the quality of the water offshore from their farm would help warn farmers of possible future water quality problems within their farm.

There are many approaches that have been developed by scientists to use satellites to provide salmon and trout farmers with information on their local water quality. Scientists have also looked at the links between reduced water quality and changes in the weather conditions. For instance satellites are routinely used for monitoring water quality in and around Salmon farms in Scotland, and simple models that relate environmental conditions like rainfall and sunlight to reduced water quality have been developed for the south west UK. These approaches and tools have yet to be made available to shellfish farms in a way that is simple for farmers to use and exploit.

This project will extend the approaches developed for Salmon farmers to be specific for shellfish farmers. It will develop and extend existing methods for using satellites for studying water quality in offshore and coastal farms. It will also extend and develop simple tools that shellfish farmers can use to predict short-term variations in water quality, based on their local weather conditions and forecasts. A simple method to provide this information in a timely manner through regular 'news bulletins' to farmers using text messages and emails will also be tested. Importantly, all of this work will be carried out in conjunction with shellfish farmers, allowing them to provide feedback on the project and ensure that the results are highly relevant to their needs.

This proposal will develop satellite Earth observation (EO) and simple modelling tools for monitoring and forecasting water quality for shellfish aquaculture. The tools developed will be tailored to help farmers monitor, and work with, EU and UK water quality regulatory requirements and to help manage water quality related risk. This project will i) extend the range of harmful algal bloom (HAB) species that can be optically discriminated using satellite data; ii) exploit the fusion of EO and meteorological data to enable warning of increased microbiological contaminants due to sewage discharges and storm overflows; and iii) develop a shellfish-specific water quality bulletin service. We will future proof our approaches by ensuring the developed methods can be exploited by the advanced capabilities of satellite sensors soon to be launched within the long term monitoring EU Copernicus programme. The project will be closely informed by consultation with the shellfish industry through partner case studies.

This proposal addresses Priority 4: Tools, methods and technologies: for risk-based management of farms, and monitoring for HABs; and Priority 1: Mechanisms of disease spread: to indicate increased risk of human pathogens (E. coli, norovirus) infecting farmed shellfish.
The objectives are tackled through five workpackages:
WP1: Stakeholder engagement - to ensure the project is informed by the shellfish industry.
WP2: Harmful algal bloom (HAB) early warning. An EO HAB classifier will be extended to discriminate further species that can impact shellfish farm water quality.
WP3: Microbiological hazard early warning: Meteorological and EO data will be exploited for water assessment and short term forecasting.
WP4: Preparing for new Earth observation sensors. We will ensure that the methods developed can fully exploit improved capabilities.
WP5: Advanced aquaculture bulletins. The novel methods will be brought together to pilot a shellfish monitoring service.

The initial non-academic beneficiaries will be the aquaculture companies involved with the project (Westcountry Mussels and Loch Fyne Oysters). Other shellfish companies and customers in the wider region will benefit in the longer-term through the approaches and methods developed within this pilot project being made available. Knowledge and new technology resulting from this project will be of use to the wider shellfish and food production industries and other aquaculture farms across the UK and Europe, who will benefit from the procedural and technological outcomes of this project. The advances made by the project will underpin a possible future operational service for advanced water quality bulletins for the wider shellfish industry. Benefits to wider society would occur through improved water quality monitoring, leading to improved shellfish food safety and increased customer confidence; and by addressing an issue of relevance to food security.

ShellEye will also feed into policy and environmental management for sustainable aquaculture, through government agencies such as Defra, the UK Environment Agency and the Marine Management Organisation and Marine Scotland, whilst also informing the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) targets for Good Environmental Status.

Further beneficiaries include: the Agri-Food and Bioscience Institute (AFBI), contributing to their knowledge on food safety, animal health and environment in relation to aquaculture; the Food Standards Agency, by the project providing advances in the monitoring of shellfish issues to improve national capability in food safety, and the Association of Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities, to help ensure healthy seas, sustainable fisheries and a prosperous industry.

Impact activities will be fast-tracked due to the existing strong connections of the partners PML, SAMS and Cefas with the shellfish industry and wider aquaculture research. Beneficiaries will be engaged through these existing links and new targeted contact via tailored project outputs. For example, all relevant shellfish companies in the southwest England will be invited to the final meeting; and we hope to reach a large proportion of the Scottish and UK industry through promotion at key industry conferences and through newletters of the Shellfish Association of GB. A project website will highlight the progress of the project, and allow interaction and registration of interests, to build a database of potential service users for meeting invitations and promotion.

Further impact deliverables will include: a 3-minute video for funders, policymakers and non-specialists; a project leaflet; three newsletters; three media releases; and a tailored final report.

The impact plan will be evaluated through continuous monitoring, and feedback sought proactively from stakeholders at several milestones in the project and continuously via a website comments form. The experienced and qualified PML Communications group includes a science broadcaster, a Postgraduate Diploma in Science Communication, and a specialist webmaster. Approximately 5% of the project budget has been allocated to these impact activities.