PRELIMINARY STUDY OF COASTAL WATER QUALITY INDEXS FOR NATURAL SEAWEED FARMING AT LABUHANBUA, SUMBAWA, NTB.

Joni Haryadi, Erlania and  I Nyoman Radiarta
Centre for Research and Development of Fisheries
joniharyadi@yahoo.com

Initial monitoring of the coastal waters quality is one of the stages right to determine the condition of natural seagrass and seaweed in coastal areas. Labuhanbua, Sumbawa, West Nusa Tenggara is one of the coastal area with huge potential for development of natural seaweed cultivation. With clear water conditions, wavy, rocky and sandy cause natural sea grass grow well. The purpose of this survey was to determine the initial conditions of water quality natural seaweed cultivation in Labuhanbua Sumbawa. Water Quality indexs (WQI) is one of the simplest ways was used to determine the appropriate water conditions in developing seaweed farming. The index has been done in the measuring environment that consists of tubidity, salinity, total phosphor, orthophosphate (PO4-P), total-N, ammonia (NH3-N), ammonium (NH4) and nitrate (NO3-N). The indexs obtained and were ranked with a scale of 0 - 100. The index then categorized in a very good, good, moderate, low and very low. WQI analysis results have shown that the level of water quality indexs in the Labuanbua waters was very good condition ie. 96.67 ± 1.83%. It means that this area was suitable for natural seaweed farming.