A new Imaging Flow Cytobot instrument, which has the capacity of imaging up to 10,000 plankton species in each seawater sample, has been successfully installed and deployed aboard the RV Tom Crean during the Marine Institute’s annual phytoplankton coastal survey in August 2024.
The survey studied the biological oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) sampling a series of stations in both coastal and offshore transects along Ireland’s southeast, south, and southwest coasts. HAB events can occur offshore and be transported into coastal and inshore bay areas, causing potentially harmful effects on aquaculture operations and marine ecosystems.
The new instrument – the Imaging Flow Cytobot (IFCB – McLane Laboratories, USA) – is a remote sensing in-situ instrument which continuously images phytoplankton species with the capacity to relay these in real-time. It is capable of imaging up to 10,000 images per sample, and analysing three samples every hour while at sea
Dave Clarke, Manager of Shellfish Safety at the Marine Institute said, “The deployment of the Imaging Flow Cytobot significantly enhances the phytoplankton team’s abilities and capacity to detect and observe HAB events occurring offshore. Identifying HAB events in offshore and coastal areas and their potential to affect inshore aquaculture operations enables the team to issue advanced warnings and alerts.
“This proactive approach adds to and builds on Ireland’s pre-existing statutory monitoring programmes for detecting marine biotoxins in shellfish and harmful algae in water. This ensures shellfish produced and harvested from offshore and inshore classified aquaculture production areas placed on the market for human consumption, are safe to eat, protecting the consumer and supporting the quality and reputation of Irish shellfish and its industry,” Dave Clarke added.
Funding for the IFCB was awarded in 2023 via the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund Union Priority 6: Supporting the Integrated Maritime Policy - Blue Growth and Marine Spatial Planning. After laboratory validation, the instrument was successfully transferred, installed and deployed in the seawater laboratory aboard the RV Tom Crean and is used to relay images, in near real-time, to the laboratory-based phytoplankton team for identification. During the August survey, the IFCB detected cells of the bloom forming species Karenia mikimotoi at stations along the south east coastline which correlated with observations from several affected inshore aquaculture production areas, and also used to map the distribution of this small bloom event along the coast and offshore.
The IFCB is a welcome addition and expansion to the work that the Marine Institute’s phytoplankton team carries out year-round, including weekly analysis of approximately 70 samples from inshore classified production areas. This information provides long-term baseline data and information regarding phytoplankton communities and dynamics, including the presence of shellfish toxin and HAB species which can affect shellfish, finfish and marine ecosystems.
Data from the IFCB will also contribute to the HAB Bulletin, a predictive forecasting report which is published weekly and details the likelihood of the onset and occurrence of inshore HAB events.
Work has now commenced on making the images from the IFCB publicly accessible, developing automated image species identification classifiers and issuing warning alerts.
