Morphological, Biochemical and Molecular Characterisations of Bacteria Isolated from Water and Submerged Painted Boat Hulls in Badagry Lagoon, Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

The submerged surfaces of boats act as microbial seed banks which introduce non-indigenous microbial strains in the marine habitat. This study focuses on the morphological, biochemical and molecular characterisation of bacteria isolated from water and submerged painted boat hulls in Badagry lagoon, Lagos state, Nigeria using standard techniques.  The mean bacterial density obtained were 1.9 x 10⁹ CFU/mL and 2.03 x 10⁴ CFU/g for water samples and hull samples respectively. Morphological, biochemical and molecular characterisation confirmed the bacteria to be Bacillus subtilis, B. flexus, B. cereus, Brevibacillus agri, Aeromonas punctata, Staphylococcus sciuri, B. licheniformis, Kurthia gibsonii and Leclercia adecarboxylata. Results of the study showed that some of the isolates (B. cereus, B. flexus, S. sciuri and L. adecarboxylata) are pathogenic while others (B. agri and A. punctate) are opportunistic pathogens. The proportion of pathogenic strains isolated in this study is greater than the non-pathogenic strains.