The proposed product will consist in a device able to automatically record swimming behaviour of aquatic organisms (specifically planktonic organisms) as an “early warning system” device for environmental monitoring, to be used in laboratory assessment of water samples or directly in the field. Products developed will represent an automatic tool to be used in ecotoxicological assessment for water quality monitoring. An experimental prototype equipped with a camera able to record the swimming behavior (i.e. swimming speed) of larval stages of aquatic organisms and to evaluate its alterations is currently available at CNR-IAS, where it has been developed at laboratory scale, supplying valid scientific data on the swimming speed alteration due to the presence of several pollutants. The goal is to implement and upgrade this system to a further TRL level in order to obtain a portable and marketable device. Moreover, the project aims at developing an “in-field” version of the device, to be used directly in aquatic environments. With this aim, the expected final product will be able to record the swimming behaviour of planktonic organisms, giving an early warning prediction of the potential changes that may occur in aquatic ecosystems. In this context, the organisms will be placed directly in the field (i.e. through an ad hoc cage to be developed in the frame of RAISE project) for a continuous monitoring (i.e. days, weeks), where their swimming through the water column at a constant rate will be recorded thanks to a camera. The product will integrate opto-mechanical components to detect planktonic organism movement and a camera based on a miniaturized computer vision architecture, that will include a complete video acquisition device, a set of image processing algorithms to trace organisms movements and a final pattern recognition module able to provide an in-field alarm detection for environmental monitoring. Changes in the swimming behaviour will be assessed by using an high resolution and high sensitivity intelligent underwater camera for content-based image recognition and classification with a freely programmable frequency for time-lapse acquisition of images. This intelligent imaging device will be used for the autonomous and stand-alone video monitoring activities in aquatic environments and will be designed for deployments extended in time. The imaging device will acquire underwater images at programmable time rates and provide on board content-based image analysis through customizable software. These images will be transferred outside the device through cabled connection. The development of this product will be useful to continuously detect alterations in term of swimming changes of planktonic organisms, providing a highly sensitive early warning indicator of aquatic pollution, by mitigating the impact of contamination.