Monitoring stress levels of Urobatis halleri and Validating the Use and Precision of Point of Care Devices

Elasmobranchs (fish, rays, and sharks) undergo situations that may cause them stress in their natural habitat. Stress can be induced in elasmobranchs by habitat degrading, predator-prey interactions, and injuries. To quantify the overall physiological stress level of the elasmobranchs, blood biomarkers including pH, lactate, glucose, hematocrit, and osmolality can be measured. As to date, studying blood physiology have relied heavily on laboratory-bound equipment and timeconsuming assays. Progress has been made in using human point-of-care (POC) devices (glucose meters, lactate meter, ketone meters) in the field to get instant results of elasmobranchs’ whole blood physiology. Compared to laboratory-bounded equipment, POCs are portable, more cost effective, and are less subjectable to experimental errors. This study specifically looked at round stingrays (Urobatis halleri) and monitored their blood physiology stress response as they recovered from a surgery using human POCs. We compared those results to benchtop assays to gather the precision of the human POCs