There is a compelling need for new technologies and approaches to help improve UK river water quality. Recent (2020) assessments revealed that only 36% of surface waters (rivers, lakes and coastal waters) in the UK are classified with 'high' or 'good' status. In England, only 14% of rivers exhibit 'good ecological status', whilst no rivers have attained 'good chemical status'. The poor state of UK rivers has implications for ecological and human health. Storm overflows discharge pollution, including sewage that contains bacterial pathogens, directly into rivers. For example, there were more than 400,000 of these discharges in England, amounting to 3.5 million hours. Freshwater recreation has never been more popular, and users are at increasing risk of exposure to bacterial pathogens, chemicals and toxic algal blooms. The challenge the project addresses The societal, legislative and economic challenges and implications of widespread poor river water quality are significant. In response, the UK's 25 Year Environment Plan, Environment Act 2021 and Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan provide new political and legal frameworks (post-Brexit) designed to improve river and bathing water quality. For water assets, the aspiration is that by 2050 all inland storm overflows will only be permitted to discharge where no local adverse ecological impact can be demonstrated. Water companies are also required to significantly reduce harmful pathogens from storm overflows discharging near designated bathing waters by 2035. Section 82 of the Environment Act 2021 now requires the monitoring of water quality parameters up and down stream of all inland storm overflows and other assets. The estimated cost of delivering storm overflow targets is £60bn. Stark evidence shows that in situ water quality measurements are not taken at relevant temporal and spatial scales and that current sensing approaches are limited to the detection and monitoring of physical/chemical parameters only. This lack of data relating to organic pollution (sewage) and microbial (bacterial and algae) contamination are significant technical & scientific barriers to implementing evidence-driven infrastructure interventions. Evidence is urgently needed reassure stakeholders (e.g. public) that interventions are responding to, and managing the rapid changes to our freshwater ecosystems ultimately, improving ecological health.

The health of human, animal and plant populations is under constant threat due to infections by a large variety of pathogenic microorganisms, such as bacteria and viruses. The fact that pathogens are able to spread rapidly and harm human populations has also led to the development of a variety of biological weapons which threaten not only soldiers in the field of operations, but even civilian populations in benign public environments such as a tube stations or airports. Threats to civilians also include those from non malicious sources such as within healthcare (hospital acquired infections, e.g. the superbug MRSA) or from the food industry (contaminated foods with pathogenic E. coli). The ability to diagnose such infections rapidly would dramatically aid patient survival and outcome and prevent further spreading of the disease. In our proposal we describe a diagnostic solution based on 'single-molecule' fluorescence for the rapid identification of multiple pathogens. We have already established a basic test for the presence of DNA specific to a particular bacterial strain and aim to build on this to develop a range of 'intelligent' biosensors based on Boolean logic and signal amplification. Essentially, such sensors will be able to provide a yes/no answer on pathogen threat level given a combination of target inputs e.g. if (pathogen 1 AND pathogen 2) but (NOT pathogen 3). Our sensors aim to produce a time-to-result on the order of 10-15 min, compared with current technologies that vary between hours and days due to the requirement of sample amplification - either bacterial culturing or DNA amplification. In parallel, we propose to further develop a compact and affordable single-molecule fluorescence microscope to perform such tests. Currently single-molecule microscopes are prohibitive in terms of size and cost; we aim to produce a cut-down version with a footprint of approximately 30cmx50cmx20cm (suitable for benchtop operation) and a small fraction of the cost of the full-size microscopes.

This project will investigate high performance sensors for making high quality measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in both ocean waters and the atmosphere close to the ocean surface. This technology could equally be used in other applications including freshwater studies. The sensor technology is based on an indicator material that changes its optical properties in the presence of CO2. Specifically the indicator is fluorescent (i.e. when exposed to a high frequency light it emits lower frequency light). This fluorescence persists for a short time after the high frequency light is turned off. The length of time that the fluorescence persists (the fluorescence lifetime) changes with the concentration of CO2. Fluorescence techniques are particularly well suited to low level and high performance measurement. Currently such indicators have not been evaluated for use in the surface ocean, and can suffer from long-term drift. To combat this the proposed research will investigate novel techniques for the optical measurement used to measure fluorescence lifetime (that reduce bleaching of the indicator), will investigate novel methods of accounting for sensor drift even when operated remotely, and will comprehensively evaluate this new technology for this new application. This is the first step towards the creation of robust and low cost in situ CO2 sensing technology suitable for widespread use in this application. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main cause of global warming and also dissolves in seawater, increasing the acidity of the oceans which can have further negative consequence on marine life and the environment. The accurate determination of CO2 concentration in a number of locations and with short intervals between measurements, particularly in the surface ocean and lower oceanic atmosphere, is critical for assessing the response of the oceans to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Crucially data from immediately above and below the air-sea interface is of critical scientific interest particularly for predicting how much CO2 is absorbed or emitted by the oceans. Current measurement techniques using ship based systems or large complex submersible systems are too expensive and bulky to enable widespread repeated measurements. This requires accuracy of one part CO2 in ten million parts air (in air) and a similar performance for measurement of dissolved CO2 in water. We propose to evaluate the technology in conditions representative of common ocean going vehicles such as floats, profiling floats (i.e. periodically sinking to depth and then surfacing), and using opportunistic deployments on commercial ships (e.g. by analysing engine coolant water on ferries and cargo vessels). This includes measurements in the atmosphere where wash-over and spray are common, and in water whilst subject to vibration and large pressure changes. The potential commercial value of this research will be explored with Chelsea Technologies Group (a UK company).

Discussions between NOC, dstl(Ministry of Defence), the Royal Navy and Chelsea Technologies Group (CTG) have highlighted what can be gained from hull-mounted underway instruments and where a lack of appropriate formal communication is failing to exploit UK research and development. Advances in the scientific understanding of the marine environment through real-time underway monitoring are not yet being integrated with traditional operational training. And the operational tools needed to exploit these advances need research and development, the outputs of which will benefit both UK operators and UK business exports. It is vital that operational requirements are efficiently fed back to industry, with the knowledge based interaction of research organisations, such that complex measured parameters are provided in a simple visual user interface. The OBS programme seeks to address these problems through a number of formal routes for knowledge exchange. Royal Navy vessels including submarines carry a wide range of underway environmental monitoring instruments. Many vessels are equipped with underway instrument packages which, in addition to temperature and salinity, also measure chlorophyll fluorescence, a biological degradation product known as Gelbstoff or 'yellow substance', trace hydrocarbons and luminescence. Some training is provided for mariners and submariners in physical oceanography to maintain a level of understanding of the impact of the sound velocity characteristics of a water column on the ability to detect and be detected acoustically. However, both the RN and DSTL have a keen interest in establishing and exploiting the use of non-acoustic indicators that provide information on the operating environment for UK strategic advantage. The data from biogeochemical environmental sensors are currently poorly understood by operators. There are no mechanisms currently in place to provide the sustained knowledge transfer necessary for the routine interpretation of these data streams for operational environmental advantage. Currently the numbers and units provided by the fluorimeters (chlorophyll, gelbstoff and hydrocarbons) and the luminescence sensors mean nothing to the operator without the incorporation of suitable training in the mariner and sub-mariner curriculum. And, the multi-variable interpretation of these data streams is where the real added value for environmental advantage could arise. This requires the development of tactical environmental prediction firmware for the real-time guidance of operations. For example a coincident increase in gelbstoff fluorescence with decreasing chlorophyll(a) fluorescence would suggest a possible change towards a dinoflagellate dominated phytoplankton population and the likelihood of significant vessel wake-driven luminescence at perhaps the 40% risk level. If we further combine this with a knowledge of oceanographic characteristics then perhaps this risk might be reduced to 20% or increased to 70%. The overall OBS programme has three parts, for which this exchange project OBS(1) will form the foundation first part. OBS(1) is a collaborative fact-finding mission to catalogue the current state of operational ability, technical procurement, mature research knowledge and operational requirements. The most important overall objectives of OBS(1) are firstly to set the details for the incorporation of long term biogeochemical operational training in the mariner and sub-mariner syllabus, to be provided by front line researchers supported by the Royal Navy under OBS(2). Secondly OBS(1) will set out the framework for the research and development of operational environmental prediction tools under OBS(3); involving close interaction with research organisations and industry. This component will develop the operator interface of the future and will be supported by dstl.

The amount of plastic entering our oceans is increasing (8 million tonnes p.a.) with global implications for the health of our planet. As this plastic debris degrades in the ocean, fragmentation will shift particle size from large plastics to smaller microplastics, even in the absence of any new inputs. Thus, the problem of microplastic pollution will only increase in future years. However, the ways in which microplastics are transported to the deep ocean are still largely unknown. This limits our ability to determine the impacts of plastic debris on the ocean ecosystem and how these can be alleviated. Microplastic debris interact with dynamic communities of zooplankton. These small organisms, which are at the base of marine food chains, ingest microplastics and repackage them into faecal pellets which may become deposited deep in the ocean over the cycle of diel vertical migration. Microplastics may also become incorporated into zooplankton body tissue which, at the end of life, will sink as part of the carcass. I am introducing a new concept of the "Plastic Pump", to collectively describe the process of incorporation of plastics into biological processes and their subsequent movement to depth. The Plastic Pump may interacts with the biological capability of the ocean to export carbon from the surface to depth (a process known as Biological Carbon Pump, BCP). Further elucidation of the interaction between the Plastic Pump and the BCP is important since the BCP provides a critical ecosystem service in mitigating climate change through uptaking and storing anthropogenically-derived atmospheric CO2 in the deep ocean. Interference by the Plastic Pump may reduce the effectiveness of the BCP. This has yet to be determined. CUPIDO will undertake two cruise expeditions where a suite of cutting edge approaches, at the intersection of biogeochemistry, material science, and biology, will be used. These approaches include floating and moored platforms that will not only determine depth profiles of plastic concentrations over seasons, but also how plastics interact with the natural ecosystem over these depths. It will also deploy a unique device, built in-house to my own design and specifications, to evaluate how oceanic plastics alter over long time scales through incubating pre-selected meso- and microplastics in in situ conditions. CUPIDO will focus on two regions located in the Southern Ocean (SO) and the Mediterranean Sea (MS). The contrasting conditions of the two selected regions (relatively pristine vs. highly polluted) allow for a comparative analysis of the impact of the Plastic Pump on the ocean's ability to export and sequester C within a low (SO) and high (MS) plastic input regime. My CUPIDO team will measure how the characteristics of plastics alter as a function of exposure to the marine environment; the vertical distribution and export of plastic over daily and seasonal timescales, and the role of zooplankton as vectors of plastics through the water column. This wealth of novel data will be analysed and modelled to predict: (i) the accumulation of plastics in specific water layers through the water column and (ii) how the flux of plastics and C alters over an annual cycle in regions of high and low plastic debris input. Overall, CUPIDO will address the hypothesis that zooplankton and food web associated processes play a major role in promoting the sinking of plastic through the water column. These mechanisms will decrease the ability of the marine ecosystem to transfer C from the surface to the deep ocean (resulting in a slowing of the BCP). The service provided by the BCP in lowering atmospheric CO2 levels has an economic significance to the mitigation of climate change. Through parameterising the various components of the Plastic Pump, CUPIDO will assess the economic impact of microplastic debris on the BCP and the value of combatting marine plastic pollution to restore levels of climate change mitigation.