Marine Biology

Macro-fouling Organisms

         Macro-foulers cause additional and even more severe problems for undersea operators. This grouping includes many larger animals and plants that may attach as individuals or in large colonies, such as barnacles, mussels, polychaetes, and various species of bryozoans and hydroids.

        The animals and plants which foul are primarily the attached, or sessile, forms which occur naturally in the shallower water along the coast. Each of these is adapted to live successfully under some restricted set of environmental conditions  both on a geographical and local scale, where it may be found. The development of an assemblage of fouling organisms on any immersed  structure in the sea depends on the ability of certain members of the natural population locally present to live successfully in the new situations created by man.

    Fouling organisms  include all  surface dwelling animals and plants which   give rise to problems of some technical interest  i.e., ships, buoys, water conduits and pipe systems, wrecks, telegraph cables, rafts, floats,  wharf piles, piers,  jetties, bridge and concrete pillars , and similar structures.

     Fouling organisms are of economic importance, since fouling of ships results in increased resistance to movement through water reducing the efficiency, lowering of speed, increasing fuel consumption and leading to wear and tear of the engine. The efficiency of underwater sound equipments fitted on to commercial and naval vessels is also seriously affected as a result of the accumulation of fouling organisms. Even the removal of these organisms requires costly docking and loss of ship’s time.  The cooling engine pipes  of  boats and larger marine engines  become clogged, and the flow is interrupted by the growth of these inside the pipes. Hence, instead of one, two sets of cooling systems  may be required to keep the boat running efficiently. Sometimes foulers are torn  and the pieces of the foulers swept into screens, tube sheets or pumps, leading to the breakdown of the entire engine systems. Accumulation of the slime-forming bacteria on the surfaces of the cooling coils of the marine engines reduces the heat-transfer efficiency of condensers. Foulers may also block the condenser tubes or the space between the turns of cooling coils, thereby causing corrosion. Thus, the problem of fouling organisms is really serious and, therefore, a thorough understanding of the ecology of fouling is necessary for solving the problem of preventing the attachment of these organisms.

        Nearly 2,000 species of following animals and plants have been identified. The animals of the fouling community is represented from all the  phyla excepting  ctenophore, chaetognatha, nematode and phoronidae .The first two are pelagic organisms not likely to occur in fouling. The nematodes are common free living members of fouling communities. The Phoronidea contain very few species  , most of them are  restricted  to the crevices in rocks as these are sessile forms .