Differentiation of Clams from Fishing Areas as an Approximation to Coastal Quality Assessment

Abstract

The quality assessment of fishing areas on the basis of the levels of heavy metals in clams ( Chamelea gallina) was attempted by using discriminant analysis. Five metals, Hg, Pb, Cd, Cu and Zn, were analyzed in the soft edible parts of clams from three fishing areas. The descriptive methods applied to data obtained do not show enough differences between sampling stations for management purposes. Only discriminant analysis is successful in the differentiation between all fishing areas. Through the first discriminant function, the group centroids are proposed as index of different source of clams. These values standardized are proposed as coastal quality index.