R/CT-6

Strategic focus area:

Description:

This proposal seeks to significantly enhance phytoplankton monitoring capacity while harmonizing data collection and management by leveraging high-throughput plankton imaging systems and engaging a variety of researchers, state agencies, and stakeholders in Chesapeake Bay. As the base of aquatic food webs, phytoplankton abundance and diversity are sentinels for healthy coastal ecosystems and directly impact fisheries and aquaculture. Imaging systems are especially warranted in Chesapeake Bay as decreases in long-term monitoring programs (due to time commitment to count samples), loss of regional taxonomy expertise, and lack of new scientists trained in taxonomic identification collectively threaten our ability to provide critical data to inform science-based management decisions. While the expanded use of satellite data has been useful in the detection of elevated phytoplankton biomass, taxonomic identification and cell counts are still needed to confirm bloom identification and determine if toxin assessments are needed. The utility of imaging systems is reliant on an expertly trained image library that encompasses the diversity of phytoplankton species present. EcoTaxa, a global plankton image library developed from a variety of instruments, can be used as an image library, however across the ~21 million trained image sets only 3 correspond to Chesapeake Bay samples taken from the York River. This project will extend this image library in partnership with other Bay imaging groups to encompass as much of the diversity as possible in the Chesapeake Bay, test the efficacy of machine-learning approaches across available instrument variants, and develop a pilot project that engages stakeholders by providing them with low-cost PlanktoScopes and tracking their engagement with this instrumentation (e.g. number and distribution of images).