Navy bottlenose dolphins are valuable Fleet assets whose health and well-being are essential to sustaining mine countermeasures, port security, and object recovery missions. Medical issues compromise performance and have direct implications for Navy mission readiness, longevity, and reliability. Additionally, for the U.S. Navy to meet environmental compliance requirements under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act, it is essential to understand the effects of sound and military activity on marine mammals, including physiological, behavioral, ecological, and population-level effects. While technologies and techniques for assessing marine mammal health are growing rapidly, many barriers remain for these Fleet assets as well as other free-swimming large cetacean species that can be used as biological sensors of the undersea environment. A transformative diagnostic tool will provide unparalleled access to physiological data and biomarkers of health, stress, and disease from free-swimming cetaceans with applications in clinical care, operational biosurveillance, and conservation.
Blood sampling of captive trained dolphins and/or stranded marine mammals enables researchers to evaluate individual and population health, age, genetics, exposure to pathogens and toxicants, and physiological responses to anthropogenic and natural stressors. By enabling minimally invasive blood sampling in free-ranging cetaceans, these animals can be used as biological sensors for persistent surveillance of the undersea environment, providing early warning of pathogens and other ecosystem stressors in operational waters. However, current blood collection methods in marine mammals are designed for use on stranded or captured individuals and are therefore limited in their capability of rapidly assessing health for larger free-swimming species. The lack of such a tool for health assessments is particularly urgent for Fleet animals and free-ranging animals in the region of deployment, where timely and accurate health assessments are essential for informing recovery efforts and mitigating population decline. As such, there is a critical need for a minimally invasive blood collection tool for remote application to the skin of free-ranging cetaceans to address significant gaps and improve our understanding of marine mammal health across spatiotemporal scales, providing unprecedented data on physiological responses, health metrics, and population dynamics.
This SBIR Direct to Phase II topic seeks to develop a prototype minimally invasive blood collection device for remote application on free-ranging cetaceans by further developing an existing capillary blood collection device initially designed for humans. This prototype device should be able to be remotely deployed using current techniques used for the deployment of suction-cup electronic tags on free-ranging marine mammals (i.e., pole-based or drone dropped) under diverse environmental conditions. This prototype will include a blood collection device, waterproof housing, delivery device using suction cup tag carrier, and suction cup-based tag attachment. This prototype waterproof device should be capable of remotely deployable blood collection across cetacean species of varying epidermal thickness. The target size and weight of the blood collection device (not including the suction cup housing) should be approximately 3.40x2.25x1.30 in in size and weigh between 0.85 and 0.95 oz. This prototype device should sit flush and seal against the skin and use suction to draw 200-800 uL of capillary blood with minimal clotting into an internal reservoir (independent of orientation) and mix the sample with anticoagulants or other stabilization chemicals. At minimum the Phase II prototype should be able to collect blood samples from species with epidermis of < 2.5 mm thickness with a plan to successfully collect blood samples from species with epidermal thickness of > 10 mm. During this collection period, the device needs to make a narrow incision (< / = 0.15 mm in width, < 5 mm in length) such that rapid wound healing is possible. Further, the device needs to account for pressure variations underwater such that it detaches from the animal after a set time (< 3 minute duration) or when it reaches a critical depth or, at a minimum, be able to identify samples that may have ex vivo red cell hemolysis. In addition, the device will need to protect the blood sample from seawater intrusion. Blood samples collected via this prototype device need to have comparable blood test values to those collected via standard venipuncture methods through the Peri-Arterial Venous Rete (PAVR). As such, to optimize reliable blood collection from the prototype device, development must address challenges including clotting, lancing depth, and anticoagulant use.
This minimally invasive blood collection prototype device will result in reliable remote deployment on free swimming cetaceans and significantly improve the capability to assess physiological responses and health measures in cetacean populations across spatial and temporal ranges. For the Navy Fleet bottlenose dolphins in particular, this prototype device will enhance the ability to detect health changes, reduce unplanned medical stand-downs, and provide more continuous health oversight by providing a minimally invasive diagnostic tool to detect infection and inflammatory markers, as well as subclinical infections. It will offer a novel tool to enhance systemic and organ-specific health monitoring, providing individualized biomarker data that can be applied to preventive medicine, geriatric care, and environmental health. Consistent with the Navy’s Clinical Research Pipeline, if this diagnostic tool proves successful, it will be integrated into the Navy’s Marine Mammal Program health program to directly improve the health and readiness of Navy dolphins, with potential translational benefits to conservation and human health.
Overall, this device and its resulting data will directly support the warfighter, improve the reliability of Navy biological assets, support environmental compliance needs, and contribute to broader undersea warfare biosurveillence objectives.
