Application of Test Battery for Assessing the Toxicity of Marine Sediments in Vostok Bay (Peter the Great Bay, Sea of Japan)

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a toxicity assessment of marine sediments from Vostok Bay based on responses of three testing organisms: the diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum (Bohlin, 1897), nauplii of the brine shrimp Artemia salina (Linnaeus, 1758), and embryos and larvae of the sand dollar Scaphechinus mirabilis (Agassiz, 1864). The A. salina nauplii survival test has proven to be the least sensitive, showing a weak response in only two samples. The results of the experiments using microalgae cells and sand dollar larvae correlated both with each other and with long-term environmental monitoring data, thus, confirming the high degree of sediment toxicity off the western coast of the bay (Gaydamak and Srednyaya coves).