Kozintsev A. The mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis Lam. is the biological indicator of pollution of the Crimean coastal waters (the Black Sea) with the heavy metals.

For purposes of biological indication of heavy metals presence in the sea environment, the new methodological approach was provided, which consists in taking into account of the individual age of the mussel, Mytilus galloprovincialis, it shows the shellfish's living period spent in the sea; the approach was justified while running the biological monitoring for assessing the pollution degree of coastal waters with the toxicants. Never before the similar studies were run to reveal the level of cadmium, lead, copper, zinc, nickel, iron contained in the mussels' soft tissues and their shells which were took from the Black Sea's different areas of the Crimean coastal waters, depending on shellfishes' age described by power & quadratic functions. The dependence of the whole mussel's mass, shell and its soft tissues on shellfishes' individual age was described by power function with the high rates of determination (R2 = 0,96). The concentrations of Cd, Pb, Cu, Zn, which are available in the soft tissues of mussels of fishery sizes and which are cultivated in Cozachya Bay until their harvesting, are 6 to 30 times less than the maximum permissible concentration limits approved for food products. By the aggregate indices of the industrial pollution impact on the coastal areas of the Black Sea, the waters of the cities of Sukhumi, Feodosiya, Sevastopol, Yalta, the northwest part of the sea and the Bosphorus Strait are the most troubled ones. The least polluted waters are those of the Capes of Chersonese and Tarkhankut, Bolshoy Utrish, Karadag Reserve, the Kazachya Bay, separate regions of the Turkish Coast of the Black Sea and the places with no impact of large rivers' flows on the biota.