Brief Overview of Methods for Assessing the Health of Aquatic Ecosystems. Problems and Prospects of Development

The current state of the concept of the health of aquatic ecosystems and the main methods and technologies (mainly instrumental) for its assessment are briefly considered. The data obtained during the study of the health of ecosystems of several recreational areas of the Black Sea, the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland, several channels of the Volga delta are considered. An operational assessment of the health of ecosystems was carried out using innovative biomonitoring technology by testing the health of adult bivalve mollusks living in them by the functional load method based on the analysis of their heart rate, measured using the BioArgus bioelectronic fiber-optic system. It has been established that the functional state of mollusks can serve as an indicator of excess pollution of coastal waters by objects that discharge insufficiently treated domestic wastewater from their local treatment facilities, including household wastewater. It is concluded that, taking into account the rather high rapidity and ease of use, this technology can be effectively used to solve the problems of screening studies and early diagnostics of the state of aquatic ecosystems as well as serve as an information basis for developing regionally oriented, science-based environmental management decisions. Recently, the BioArgus automated system was metrologically type-certified (Order of Rosstandart No. 2702 dated 10/27/2022 on the approval of types of measuring instruments). The latter opened up the legal right to use this measuring system in urban water supply and sanitation enterprises, as well as to develop various regional certified methods and technologies for assessing the ecological state (health) of aquatic ecosystems, based on the use of BioArgus systems as measuring instrument.