Journal of Marine Science: Research & Development
Open Access

Research Article

Study of the Microbial Health in and Around the Lower Stretch of Hooghly Estuary

¹ Department of Marine Science, University of Calcutta, Kolkata 700019 and Department of Oceanography, Techno India University, Salt Lake Campus, Kolkata, India

² Department of Microbiology, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore (West), India

*Corresponding Author:

Rahul Bose
Department of Marine Science
University of Calcutta, Kolkata 700019 and Department of Oceanography
Techno India University
Salt Lake Campus, Kolkata, India
Tel: 9831269550
E-mail: Boserahul.89@gmail.com

Received date November 03, 2013; Accepted date January 28, 2014; Published date February 02, 2014

Citation: Bose R (2014) Study of the Microbial Health in and Around the Lower Stretch of Hooghly Estuary. J Marine Sci Res Development S11:004. doi:10.4172/2155-9910.S11-004

Copyright: © 2014 Bose R. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

We investigated microbial load and few common hydrological parameters in the Hooghly Estuarine stretch of the Maritime State of West Bengal (India). The study site is located in the Lower Gangetic Delta and is the western part of the famous mangroves ecosystems of Indian Sundarbans. We observed significant spatial variations of all hydrological parameters (except surface water temperature) which are mainly due to the proximity of the stations to the Bay of Bengal. Significant spatial variations were also observed in the Total Bacterial Count (TBC), Fecal Coliform (FC) count, Total Coliform (TC) count, E. coli count, Streptococcus sp. count, which can be related to the type and magnitude of anthropogenic activities operating in and around the selected stations. A long term monitoring is required to understand the spatio-temporal variations of hydrological parameters and microbial load in the Lower Gangetic Delta as it sustains a unique genetic diversity in the Indian subcontinent