Study of microorganisms coming into the port of Vladivostok with ballast water of ships

Abstract

The number and variety of heterotrophic and sanitary indicative bacteria in the ballast water of the Minotaur and Sunrise Wisteria tankers arriving from the ports of China and Japan are studied. It is found that ballast water coming into the port of Vladivostok from Japanese ports is less polluted than that from Chinese ports, which is defined as dirty and very dirty in the summer period. According to the pathogenicity of microflora, the donor ports can be arranged in the following series: Nantong > Longkou > Yangzhou > Laizhou > Mizushima > Iwakuni > Kawasaki. In ballast water of the Minotaur (from the Chinese ports), enterobacteria, the number of which exceeded the sanitary norms (by 40 or more times), and gram-negative mobile rod-shaped bacteria with an enzymatic type of metabolism resistant to heavy metals and antibiotics are singled out. For this reason, the habitats of these bacteria are characterized as insufficiently sated with oxygen and polluted by industrial and household water wastes. The sanitary indicator microorganisms are represented mainly by the following enterobacteria: Hafnia (37%), Enterobacter liqueface (22%), Citrobacter (15%), and Shigella (7%). According to data from a cytolytic test, the highest pathogenicity is found in Shigella, Hafnia, Citrobacter, and Salmonella.