Journal of the Marine Biological Association of India

Community structure of fouling on a sunken vessel from Visakhapatnam harbour, east coast of India

Volume 53 Issue 1

S. K. Pati, M. V. Rao, M. Balaji and Anish V. Pachu

Abstract

Community structure of fouling on a sunken vessel ‘Marine Victor’ that was under water for almost 10 years was analyzed. The fouling assemblage was found to comprise of 31 species making up a very rich biomass of 10.7 kg.m-2. Among these forms, the vermetid mollusc, Serpulorbis sp. was found to be dominant, though oysters were major contributors to the biomass. Shannon-Wiener index (H´) indicated α-diversity to be slightly high while Simpson’s dominance index (C) showed that a few organisms were dominant over the rest. Shannon’s evenness index (J´)revealed unequal contribution of each species towards abundance. ‘Goodness of fit’ disclosed no significant difference between the distributions of the number of species observed and expected and also confirmed the log series distribution of species in the community. Perna indica Kuriakose and Nair, 1976 recorded from the vessel formed a new distributional record to east coast of India, though Perna viridis (Linnaeus, 1758)was reported earlier on different occasions.

Keywords

Biofouling, diversity, sunken vessel, Visakhapatnam harbour

Date : 30-08-2011