High Abundance of Vibrio in Tarball-contaminated Seawater from Vagator Beach, Goa, India

Tarballs are semi-solid remnants of crude oil and they are formed in marine environment after oil-spill incidents. They are composed of diverse hydrocarbons; some of which are recalcitrant in nature. Recent studies based on amplicon sequencing of 16S rRNA gene suggested that tarballs support hundreds of bacterial genera and provided insights into their role as hydrocarbon degraders and potential human pathogens. In this study, bacterial composition of tarball-contaminated seawater from Vagator beach, Goa, India was characterized by amplicon sequencing of V-V regions of 16S rRNA gene. The DNA data revealed an unusual surge of Vibrio in sea-water contaminated with tarballs in May 2018 (16.16% OTUs), compared to tarball-free seawater samples collected in March 2018 (no detectable OTUs) and September 2018 (0.17% OTUs). Further studies are required to investigate if Vibrio species form biofilms on tarballs which may act as good reservoirs for their survival and transmission success.