Marine Water Quality

•Pritha Chakraborty(11MSM0017)•Soumya Banerjee(11MSM0029)•Niladri ShekharPattanayak(11MSM0036)•Abhinab Das(11MSM0052)•Gaurav Kumar Srivastava(11MSM0041)

Ocean covers approximately 70% of the Earth’s toal surface area.

97% of total water content is present in the ocean.

Harbors rich source of biodiversityServes as the main regulatory agent of

Earth’s climate. It was thought that human being can’t

pollute that vast amount of water.Reality is not the same.

Pollutants from different sources are the causes of continuous dropping of marine water quality.

It is detrimental to human health, economic development, climate and biodiversity.

Also interfering with the sustainability of environment and its resources.

The water quality is that a body of water should be able to support its designated uses, which could include shell-fishing, swimming, other body contact or fishing.

Pollutants enters the ocean are diluted But microbes tends to concentrate these

pollutants in their body by various mechanism such as:

Adsorption Absorption Ingestion

Bioconcentration: is a process by which pollutants are directly taken up from water and is accumulated to levels greater than those found in the surrounding water.

Biomagnification: is the increase in the tissue concentration of a bioaccumulated chemical substances.

Bioaccumulation : is a process by which a contaminant is taken up by microbes directly through the physical exposure pathway or through consumption of contaminated food.

It incorporates the concepts of bioconcentration and biomagnification.

It depends upon the composition of food and concentration factors, which varies with different environment for a organism with a given chemical.

Concentration factors: are used to quantify the bioaccumulation.

It can be defined as the concentration of chemical in the organisms divided by the seawater or surrounding concentration in the environment from which the organism was living.

Microbes can take up chemicals directly from seawater or from their food.

Sewage: contain organic matters, detergents, oil, nutrients and toxic heavy metals.

Sources are coastal cities, shipping activities

Increased BOD destroy the kelp bed, degrade the benthic communities.

Heavy metals: Lead (Pb), Chromium (Cr), Mercury (Hg), Copper (Cu), Cadmium (Cd).

Sources are coal combustion, electric utilities, steel and iron manufacturing, fuel oil and oil additives.

Effect: blocking of essential functional groups of the biomolecules (proteins and enzymes), displacement of metal ion from biomolecules, modification of structure of biomolecules.

Pesticides: is any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling any pest.

TypesNatural: biodegradableArtificial: non biodegradable produced

after industrial revolution.Effect: not openly seen, organochlorides

cause microsomal enzyme induction.

Polychlorinated biphenyles (PCBs): are a series of technical mixtures consisting of many isomers and compounds that vary from mobile oily liquids to white crystalline solids and hard non-crystalline solid.

Sources: are older electrical equipments like transformer, insulations.

Effect: typically causes reproduction problem in microbes.

Radioactive metals: ocean become sink of radioactive waste.

Sources: nuclear accidents, releasing or dumping of waste from nuclear fuel system,

Effects: direct toxicity caused by ionized atoms produce strong oxidizing ions which are harmful, can cause lethal mutations, which results in teratogenesis

Dissolved oxygen: is important for aquatic organisms. Many of the microbes need it to perform their decomposition function (aerobic decomposers)

Turbidity: is caused by suspended materials that blocks the path of light. It is a measure of how much of light is scattered by suspended materials in the water.

Unit: is Nephelometric Turbidity unit.

Fecal coliform bacteria: indicate the contaminations from warm blooded creatures.

The MFC (membrane filtration technique) is standard method to enumerate fecal coliform in water sample.

Coliforms are not pathogenic, but their presence indicate the possibility of pathogenic presence.

For shel-lfishing fecal coliform level should be above than 14 CFU/100ml. for swimming 200 CFU/100ml.

Total nitrogen and phosphorus: is a measure of total nitrogen and phosphorus content. Nitrogen can be detected by persulfate digestion method.

Phosphorus stimulate the growth of aquatic weed and blooms of the BGA.

Elevated level of nitrogen and phosphorus can stimulate excessive plant growth (eutrophication), very harmful to aquatic environment. Some countries banned high phosphate detergents.

Suspended solids: causes siltation and carry toxic chemicals and nutrients. High concentrations of suspended solids can be considered as the most widespread water quality problems.

Chlorophyll a: is a measure of phytoplankton biomass.

Standard level is 40 micrograms/liter.

In INDIA various government, non government, and autonomous institute and Universities are involved in marine pollution monitoring and control studies.

Department of science and technology Department of ocean development National institute of ocean technology National institute of oceanography

National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program - Water quality in the Puget Sound Basin 

Summary of suspended-sediment concentration data, San Francisco Bay, California, water year 2000

Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Geology Field Center .Access USGS - San Francisco Bay and Delta [

Harbor Studies: the fate of sediments and contaminants in Massachusetts Bay 

 Early results from the Northern Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem Change and Hazard Susceptibility Project

Fragile environments: San Francisco Bay wetlands