New normal baseline data during nationwide lock down due to Covid 19 pandemic in the world’s largest ship recycling yard at Alang, India

Abstract

A detailed study to generate the new normal baseline data has been carried out during nationwide lockdown (May 12 to May 16, 2020) covering sampling for ambient air, coastal water, coastal sediments, fish and bioaccumulation of heavy metals, in an around Alang, the world’s biggest ship recycling yard. The lockdown data were compared with 2018 and 2019 observed data. PM 10 values during lockdown were reduced by 3.75 to 4.5 times as compared with previous 2 years. Similarly, four-fold reduction of PM 2.5 and SPM values was observed during lockdown. The gaseous pollutants like NO 2 and O 3 are within safe limit. Overall air quality index (AQI) improved significantly during lockdown. Similarly, there was drastic reduction in the majority of the nutrient parameters in the coastal water. Different heavy metal concentration in the coastal sediments samples also showed strong reduction during lockdown sampling in comparison with other two sampling. This proves that the coastal environment has its efficient self-cleaning potentials if there is considerable reduction in the anthropogenic as well as industrial activities. Diversity of phytoplankton and zooplankton also increased. The results were validated using statistical techniques like analysis of variance and least significance difference (LSD). Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11356-021-12885-y.

Impact of 2nd wave of COVID-19-related lockdown on coastal water quality at Diu, western coast of India and role of total alkalinity on bacterial loads

“…2021). COVID-19 lockdown has also been reported to reduce the industrial activities in the Morocco which resulted in reducing the pollution in Boukhalef river (Cherif et al 2020). Our present study supports that all these findings where considerable improvement of water quality with respect to physico-chemical as well as reduction in microbiological load were reported in the Diu coast of western India due to COVID-19-related lockdown followed by cessation of anthropogenic activities.…”

“…However, there is a drastic reduction in the year 2020-2021 due to pandemic-related reduction in fishing activities (personal communication, data not available so far). Recently, our group has reported the self-replenishing capacity of Alang ship recycling yard (the world largest ship recycling yard), area located 30 km away from Diu, and it was clearly shown that due to cessation of anthropogenic activities, during April-May, 2020; there is a considerable reduction in different physico-chemical parameters in both coastal water and sediment samples as well as in the ambient air (Chanchpara et al 2021). In another recent study, it has already been reported that different anthropogenic activities are the source of water pollution (Lotliker et al 2021).…”

Fishing litter dominates the litter along the beaches of Palk Bay, Southeastern of India

“…The density of face masks in this study (0.017 items/m 2 ) is comparable with the density reported by [44] on shing beaches in India. This region already faces existing waste management issues, and the litter created by the COVID-19 pandemic phase has made the already-existing issues worse [44][45][46].…”

Pre-to-post COVID-19 lockdown and their environmental impacts on Ghoghla beach and Somnath beach, India

“…The environmental monitoring during the course of lockdown as well as their comparative assessment has gained greater attention from environmentalists (Coccia, 2020 , 2021c and 2022b ). There are assessment reports explaining the quality of water, ambient air and other environmental attributes during the pre-to-post lockdown at Indian and global context (Saraswat and Saraswat 2020 ; Chanchpara et al 2021 ; Sun et al 2021 ; Sahoo et al 2021 ). The entry to Somnath shrine and Diu Island for the tourists and pilgrims was banned until the end of 2020.…”