Sensors for Monitoring Harmful Algae, Cyanobacteria and Their Toxins

1 E XECUTIVE S UMMARY The Alliance for Coastal Technologies (ACT) and the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (NOAA-IOOS) co-sponsored a workshop titled “Sensors for Monitoring of Harmful Algae, Cyanobacteria and Their Toxins” which convened 30 January – 1 February 2017 at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. Invited participants included a cross section of technology developers, vendors, agency representatives, regional managers and academic researchers engaged in harmful algae (HA) and toxin detection and monitoring from both freshwater and marine habitats. The workshop posed several questions that spanned use cases, needs, readiness levels, and advantages and limitations of current technology. By bringing together folks from different disciplines, these topics were discussed from a variety of angles. Specific goals were to: 1. Document the current use of technologies demonstrated to detect harmful algal blooms (HABs) and their associated toxins both in impacted U.S. coastal regions and internationally. 2. Discuss the suitability of currently available technologies to meet monitoring and forecasting needs. 3. Discuss the current state of performance verification testing of the available technologies. 4. Determine shared challenges that can be leveraged across the marine-freshwater continuum. 5. Define the role ACT (and others) could play to further the testing of currently available instruments and/or foster a competitive environment for the development of new sensors/technologies as identified by our regional stakeholders (a HAB sensor challenge akin to the Nutrient Sensor challenge) in light of concurrent efforts. The need for sensitive and robust HAB and toxin detection capabilities are ongoing, as toxic events continue to threaten and affect economies, human health, and natural resources (i.e. drinking water, seafood) on a global scale. The desire for tools that predict and mitigate events is shared across the continuum of stakeholders, including managers, public health officials, researchers, and the public. The goals of this workshop directly align with the mandate of the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act (HABHRCA; authorized by Congress in 1998; reaffirmed and expanded in 2004 and 2014; submitted for re-authorization to Congress, August 2017), which requires NOAA to advance our understanding and abilities for HAB event detection, monitoring, assessment and prediction. Further, for the past several years NOAA has directed significant resources to developing an Ecological Forecasting Roadmap (EFR), a coordinated and systematic approach to ecological forecasts needed by the nation. HABs are a priority focus for this activity based on needs expressed by stakeholders, NOAA’s maturity and capacity to develop HAB forecasts, and the national significance of the issue. This workshop was a timely follow-up from prior HAB detection workshops (2002 and 2008) and resulted in updated recommendations including: 1) continued refinement of current methods to expand detection ranges and address cell physiology; 2) advancement of new strategies to further engage stakeholders to better define sensor technology for development or modification and identify realistic use cases; 3) tap into alternate sources of funding and partnerships to develop sustainable networks for long term data sets from regional HAB observing systems and mobile platforms; 4) retain a high performance computing network for efficient data storage and sharing; and 5) conduct a near-future ACT-based performance verification of commercially available HAB toxin kits to support the growing needs of the stakeholder community.