Tethya meloni (Porifera, Demospongiae): a promising bioremediator species and source of marine natural products

One of the main problems of aquaculture is the environmental impact of its effluents, rich in particulates and dissolved nutrients from feces and undigested feed, which can promote bacterial growth, including pathogenic bacteria. This process is particularly harmful in the case of terrestrial aquaculture, where contaminants can accumulate in a confined area. In this case, aquaculture discharges threaten the health of the habitat. This paper shows studies aimed at evaluating the aptitude of the demosponge Tethya meloni to be proposed as a new bioremediator species for the treatment of effluents from land-based fish farm. Our results demonstrated that T. meloni can effectively control the growth of Vibrio parahaemolyticus even at high concentrations (10 ⁶ CFU mL- ¹ ). Furthermore, preliminary results on characterization of natural products obtained from T. meloni denote a potential commercial value that make this species suitable as bioremediator even more attractive for mariculture companies.