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

该项目将使用海洋观测卫星和天气预报，以帮助监测贝类养殖场周围的水质。这些工具将帮助贝类养殖者做出决定，例如何时收获他们的作物，以避免附近水域受到污染。被称为“水产养殖”的海产品（如贝类）的养殖或培育是世界范围内重要的蛋白质来源。随着全球人口的持续增长，作为重要食物来源的水产养殖需求只会增加。因此，增加水产养殖产量将有助于为子孙后代提供粮食安全。因此，帮助确保高效和可持续水产养殖的方法（例如，减少养殖成本和能源使用，并确保供应）显然将有助于该行业扩大规模，以养活未来的人口。降低水产养殖场内水质的污染事件，无论是人为的还是自然发生的，都会对水产养殖场产生重大影响。这些事件可能导致库存损失（即贝类必须被处理掉），捕捞停止（造成对客户的供应损失），疾病或在极端情况下死亡（通过人类食用受污染的食物）。英国和欧洲的水产养殖场及其周围的水质是通过收集水样和分析养殖海鲜肉的一系列测试来监测的。这项抽样是由政府机构进行的。由于资金限制和这种采样的复杂性，不可能每天都采样，并且在采集样本和将结果提供给农民之间存在延迟。农民自己往往没有办法测量自己农场内的水质，所以他们不得不依靠机构提供的监测，即使是零星的，结果也会延迟。而最新的水质信息将帮助农民决定何时收获以及收获多少。有关他们农场离岸水质的信息将有助于警告农民他们农场内未来可能出现的水质问题。科学家已经开发了许多方法，利用卫星向鲑鱼和鳟鱼养殖户提供当地水质的信息。科学家们还研究了水质下降和天气条件变化之间的联系。例如，卫星通常用于监测苏格兰鲑鱼养殖场及其周围的水质，并且已经为英国西南部开发了将降雨和阳光等环境条件与水质下降联系起来的简单模型。这些方法和工具尚未以一种方便农民使用和利用的方式提供给贝类养殖场。该项目将扩大为鲑鱼养殖户开发的方法，使其专门适用于贝类养殖户。它将发展和扩展利用卫星研究近海和沿海农场水质的现有方法。它还将扩展和开发简单的工具，使贝类养殖户可以根据当地的天气条件和预报来预测水质的短期变化。还将测试一种简单的方法，即通过短信和电子邮件向农民定期发布“新闻公报”，及时提供这些信息。重要的是，所有这些工作都将与贝类养殖户一起进行，使他们能够对项目提供反馈，并确保结果与他们的需求高度相关。

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.