Water quality and percentage of hard coral cover in Ambong Bay And Usukan Bay of Kota Belud, Sabah

• Main Author: Nur Syafinaz Ameera Zainal
• Format: Academic Exercise
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: QH Natural history
• Online Access: https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/17572/1/Water%20quality%20and%20percentage%20of%20hard%20coral%20cover%20in%20Ambong%20Bay%20And%20Usukan%20Bay%20of%20Kota%20Belud%2C%20Sabah.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/17572/

"Water quality parameters need to be tested in an area to determine whether the area is contaminated with pollution such as fecal coliform and heavy metals pollution. Some of these pollutants are not toxic but if it exist in excess of that environment will lead harm to human life and other marine organisms such as fish, and coral since all these ecosystem linked with each other very well. A study was carried out to determine and to compare the water quality in Ambong Bay and Usukan Bay, besides to determine and to compare the percentage of hard coral cover between the two bays. It is also were carried out to determine the relationship between the water quality of the two bays and the percentage of hard coral cover. Fecal coliform analyses were done by using Membrane Filter (14F) method while heavy metals were done by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Otomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES). The results obtained showed that the in situ water parameter for both bays in terms of temperature (°C), pH, turbidity (NFU), salinity (psu), DO (mg/L) shows that it is in the range compared to National Water Quality Standards of Malaysia. Meanwhile for fecal coliform, Ambong Bay showed higher reading compared to Usukan Bay which was 1.44 CFU/100mL ± 1.20 to 4.70 CFU/100mL ± 1.03 respectively. For heavy metal analyses, Usukan Bay shows higher concentrations of Cd, Cr, Cu, Pb, Zn, and Al which were 0.003 mg/L ± 0.001,0.456 mg/L ± 0.058,0.991 mg/L ± 0.308,0.438 mg/L ± 0.049,2.917 mg/L ± 1.245, and 2.336 mg/L ± 0.344 respectively. While for the percentage of hard coral cover, Ambong Bay shows higher percentage but with less diverse type of coral growth compared to Usukan Bay. The statistical analysis of One way ANOVA showed that there were significance difference (p<0.05) for temperature, pH, turbidity, DO, fecal coliform and six heavy metals elements. Pearson's Correlation showed that only temperature shows relationship with the percentage of hard coral cover. From this study, it shows that Ambong Bay and Usukan Bay is contaminated with pollutants such as fecal coliform and heavy metals but the contamination is not too high and still can be acceptable.