WOODS HOLE – Bruce Keafer calls it a robot in a box. Roughly the size of a kitchen sink, it was lowered into the waters off Portsmouth, N.H., last week, where it will sample marine organisms to measure toxic red tide cells over the next 45 days.
The device, he hopes, will be a tool for forecasting outbreaks of red tide.
Initial results have detected red tide cells off Portsmouth in areas where shellfish had not tested positive for toxins.
“This will help shellfish managers because they can’t see what’s happening off the coast,’’ said Keafer, a research associate at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
The brainchild of Chris Scholin, a former Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution doctoral student, the sensor transmits information in real time to researchers about the genetic makeup of organisms in the water so they can detect red tide.
Scientists are specifically looking for Alexandrium fundyense, an alga growing off the coast of Maine that releases natural toxins when it blooms in the spring and is the only species responsible for paralytic shellfish poisoning in humans, which can occur after ingesting fish or shellfish exposed to it.
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