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Pathogen-detecting robots have been enlisted in the fight to prevent illness in Puget Sound sea creatures and the people who eat them.

Robotic Environmental Sam-ple Processors — known as ESPs to scientists — have been deployed at Lummi Island and Taylor Shellfish Co. on Samish Island to sample and analyze the ocean water.

Data from the samples is sent out “in near real time to scientists,” said Stephanie Moore, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. That way, anything toxic growing in the water will be detected early.

“It’s an incredible advance-ment,” Moore said. “There’s no delay” in when scientists receive the data.

In the past, testing for patho-gens, including toxins that cause paralytic seafood poisoning, was a time-consuming process. It required a person to physically go out and dig a sample shellfish and then send it off to be analyzed. The process could take days.

Dangerous bacteria levels can double in a few hours; two days is far too long to wait for test results, Moore said.