IÇEMER., G.T., CAN, E., ATASOY, L AND YILDIRIM, U.B., 2011. The Effects of Yacht Activities on Sea Water Quality. In: Micallef, A. (ed.), MCRR3-2010 Conference Proceedings, Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue, No. 61, pp. 471. Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy, ISSN 0749-0208.
Nowadays, in our country sea tourism become a popular and growing tourism trend. That's way researches of marine pollution and investigation of sea water quality come into prominence in these days. Marine tourism and yachting are common in Aegean Sea and Mediterranean Sea is the second place in popularity. In the Mediterranean zone, yacht tourism is more common in Antalya coast and lies down from Alanya to Kaş. Antalya - Phaselis - Olympos - Kekova and Kemer - Phaselis - Olympos ship's cruises are the most preferred ways and yacht tourism is done as daily tours or blue cruises in this zone. During the tours, yachts remove their rest and staying needs at the small bays in their cruises. The study area of this research is Phaselis, where daily yachts take meal break and charters stay for a few days. It is placed in the 70. km of Finike - Antalya highway and open to the visitors come from land with a 1,5 km way. There are three small bays at Phaselis ancient city (north, south and center bays). In the high level tourism season this bays are used intensively by yachts and people. As a result of this intense usage, water pollution is occurred. Sometimes, this pollution can't be assimilated and physical carrying capacity of water is exceeded.
Yacht activities in the Bay cause pollution as air emissions, exhaust gases, anchors, solid wastes, shower water, sewage water and noise. The wastes, meal rests, plastic wastes, glasses which launched into the sea from yachts are big problem for the sea ecosystem. On the other hand, most of the wastewater which formed during daily tours is discharged to the sea. Some of the swimmers use sea as a toilette.
In this study, the effects of yacht originated wastes to the sea water quality are investigated. For this purpose, water samples were collected by two weeks intervals and 5 times totally, from five different sampling points of the bay. Then samples are kept in a cold chain and physical, chemical and microbiological (Escherichia coli and Intestinal enterococcus) analyses were done at laboratory. On the other hand, three samples were taken from the shoreline at different times of day (morning, noon and evening) and microbiological parameters (Escherichia coli and Intestinal enterococcus) were analyzed daily during two weeks (one week in August and other in September). As a result of this study, it has seen that water quality is affected in a bad way because of this intensive usage. The nutrient quantity is not serious but there is a significant bacteriological pollution. To add, the bacteria count is not high in the morning but it increases during day in connection with the usage of sea by swimmers and yachts. For a sustainable use of this place everybody have to hold one's end of the bargain up. For this purpose, awareness of the people have to be raised, education must be given to people especially to the yachters. Physical carrying capacity of the bay must be determined and precautions should be taken to protect the bay from excess pollution
