Ireland: Novel eDNA approach may enhance aquaculture monitoring

A new eDNA approach for monitoring the seabed conditions around marine fish farms could significantly speed up the assessment of sediment samples, enabling salmon producers and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) to gather timely, accurate information to demonstrate environmental impact. Marine benthic invertebrates, which dwell in and upon the sea floor, can act as useful indicators of ecosystem health and, as such, are often used by researchers to assess the impacts of human activities, such as fish farming, on the benthos. However, benthic monitoring has historically relied on the manual identification of invertebrates, which is extremely time consuming, often taking up to three days to complete just one sample and costing the aquaculture sector an estimated £1 million per year. “Demonstrating good environmental performance at our sites is critical, both for our customers and for compliance reasons. At the moment, we sample the seabed followed by sieving and ...