Abstract
The physicochemical parameters of the coastal water at eight different locations of Palk Strait were studied and the temperature have been taken as a significant parameter to predict the biomass of the phytoplankton and bacterial community in the summer and the monsoon seasons. The bacterial population was higher with the total dissolved solids (TDS) value in the bottom water of Rameshwaram with availability of Total viable count (TVC) – 5500,000 CFU/mL; Fecal coliforms (FC) – 7500 CFU/mL and Fecal Streptococci (FS) – 1630 CFU/mL. The highest pollution index (PI) observed in the same region at the PI range is 4.60 during summer season. On the contrary, monsoon season shows less bioavailability of phytoplankton than other parameters in the same region. Bacterial population was found higher at the monsoon season as 7200,000 CFU/mL due to mixing of nutrients from the fresh water inputs. The highest availability of nutrients and moderate temperature have considerable effects in this study. The one-way ANOVA analysis of the locationwise study shows the statistical significance with all the parameters with exception of few including dissolved oxygen (DO), temperature, pH, electrical conductivity (EC), FS and FC at the surface water.
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