The low iron molecules produced from various sources are the siderophores. These are taken up by bacteria to help their process of iron uptake which is necessary for all microbes to obtain environmental iron indeed for important processes. In the present study, siderophore production by bacteria present in the coastal waters of Parangipettai was analyzed. Among the total of 40 isolates obtained, only five were able to produce siderophores by the CAS agar plate assay method. The production of an orange or a yellow hallow zone around a colony indicated that it is a siderophore producer. The present study provides a detailed protocol to prepare the CAS agar without any difficulty.

Proteolytic enzyme, also called protease, proteinase, or peptidase, any of a group of enzymes that break the long chainlike molecules of protein into shorter fragments (peptides) and eventually into their components, amino acids proteolytic enzymes are present in bacteria. Protease are produced from various sources but only little information is available regarding the bacterial population in fish wastes of Chidambaram fish market and their efficiency in synthesizing protease enzyme. Isolated 25 bacterial strains and found that only 5 of them are capable of producing protease enzyme that are Pseudomonas sp. and Bacillus sp. was the best protease producer among the tested strains. In the present study, all the bacterial species isolated had a better potentiality of degrading market fish wastes.