Abstract
Faecal bacteriological indicators and copepod density assessment are used to predict the environmental health of seawater for recreational bathing and artisanal fishing, respectively. The reproducibility of bacterial culture-count and copepod-microscopic density assessment after respective capturing of the sampled seawater on 0.22 microm Millipore filter and 150 microm mesh sieve copepod net, is determined. The paired t-test was performed to evaluate the reproducibility of each obtained parameter-mean in first and second simultaneous water samplings of a total of 10 sites selected along a 200 km distance, at about 500-1000 m offshore. The means of each bacterial indicator in colony forming units/100 ml of sea water in first versus (vs.) second sampling of the 10 sites, followed by the P values were: total bacterial count (6.3 x 10(2) vs. 6.2 x 10(2), P=0.958), Coliform count (3.9 x 10(2) vs. 2.6 x 10(2), P=0.212), Staphylococcus aureus (3.0 x 10(2) vs. 2.4 x 10(2), P=0.551), and Clostridium perfringens (1.4 x 10 vs. 0.4 x 10, P=0.298). However, the average copepod density in five microscopic fields at magnification of 100x in sample 1 vs. sample 2 were: (1.40 vs. 1.60 respectively, P=0.267). This sampling design along the 200 km coast, the used technique for capturing the indicators, and the quantitative laboratory assessment of the indicator densities resulted in high reproducibility with a non-significant difference between the first and second sampling within the 95% confidence limits (P>0.05), a data in support of future monitoring protocol of the environmental health of the coastal water of the Mediterranean sea.