Southern California’s estuaries can experience large swings in water quality due to events like freshwater inflow, sewage spills, and estuary mouth closures. The Tijuana River NERR (TRNERR) monitors several estuaries in San Diego County to better understand how biological communities respond to changes in water quality. Through an iterative process with TRNERR and other users, this project team co-developed a biosensor monitoring system that uses shellfish (oysters and mussels) as biosentinels. Alongside state and local land managers and other wetland and aquaculture professionals, the team designed an open-source electronic sensor that attaches to shellfish and monitors gaping behavior and heart rate. These metrics that can be used as indicators of physiological stress in response to environmental changes.

In this webinar, the project team will describe their collaborative process within the team and with additional potential end users. Potential users included resource managers, aquaculture practitioners, and research biologists working with these bivalves in other settings. The team will describe the basic components of the biosensor equipment and approaches used in the field and lab for gathering and analyzing data. Data from the focal estuaries will be used to illustrate individual and group responses of the biosentinel bivalves to rapidly-shifting water quality conditions.