## 1 Introduction  
Over the next two decades, the world's human population is projected to increase by 1.3 billion [1]. Recently industrialized, developing nations with improved standards of living will drive higher energy consumption. Based on these projections, the InternationalEnergy Agency (IEA) forecasts a 19% increase in world energy demand by the year 2040 [1]. To meet these future energy demands, microalgae are a promising prospect for biofuel production [2]. Eukaryotic microalgae are a diverse group of organisms that can grow in a variety of environmental conditions, such as sewage, wastewater, alkaline, brackish, and saline water systems [3]. Production of microalgae does not require arable land and thrives outdoors in desert areas with natural sunlight. Thus, it is believed that microalgae may represent a viable path to create renewable transportation fuels and feedstocks to better support growing global energy needs. Although many species and strains of microalgae have been tested for use in biofuel production, relatively few have been found to be both high lipid producers and amenable to large-scale industrial production with natural sunlight [4]. One promising genus for biofuel production is _Microchloropsis_ (formerly _Nannochloropsis_) [5], whose members have been found to have up to have ~40% of their biomass as lipids and exhibit high productivity in outdoor mass production systems with natural sunlight [6]. Additionally, _Microchloropsis gaditana_ is genetically tractable, meaning genetic engineering and optimization are more likely to be successful [3; 7], and has been extensively characterized in terms of flocculation, extraction of bioenergetic molecules [8]. Thus, _M. gaditana_ is an important candidate for a biofuel production species [9; 10]. Algal production systems are subject to both abiotic and biotic threats resulting in pond crashes with high economic costs. Abiotic threats include depletion of a nutrient, oxygen deficiency, overheating, freezing, pH disturbance, or contamination [11]. Many algal species are sensitive to freezing which results in a physical disruption of the cell through the formation of ice crystals [12]. Biotic threats for biofuel production from microalgae is the wide variety of pathogens, grazers, parasites, and competitor species that are detrimental to algal growth and production [13]. As part of their study to define reliability metrics for algal cultivation systems, [PERSON] et al. [14] have defined pond failure or crash as \"when pond operational systems, human error, biological contamination, and/or abiotic stresses cause the algae in the pond to manifest reduced growth rates or completely cease growing as observed by stagnation or a decrease in optical density (OD), or in extreme cases, death of the algae culture resulting in a complete clearing of the pond\". Conservatively, it is estimated that 30% of algal pond crashes are the result of biological contaminants [15]. Developing methodology to monitor, circumvent, and ultimately prevent predation of algae will increase biomass production, drive down costs for algae farmers, and reduce the risk involved with algae cultivation, making it more favorable for investment by entrepreneurs and biotechnology companies. Current methods to monitor and mitigate unhealthy ponds exist, but intervention before culture collapse occurs is hindered by laborious procedures, data with low signal-to-noise, and a lack of early indicators. For example, light microscopy is a standard method for monitoring pond samples for biological contaminants [16]; however, it is limited by the advanced training needed to differentiate various microbial species, the time-consuming and labor-intensive work of analyzing samples \"by eye\", and a challenge with acquiring a representative sample of the entire culture (e.g., analysis of a 10 mL pond sample from a 100,000 L algal production pond likely will not capture all types of pond inhabitants).