Environmental risk assessment of harmful algal blooms case study: Persian Gulf and Oman Sea located at Hormozgan Province, Iran

Persian Gulf and Oman Sea are considered to be one of the most important Iranian aquatic ecosystems. Over the past few decades, frequency and geographical distribution of harmful algal bloom increased, worldwide, that may also pose a threat to human health and aquatic ecosystems, and the “health” of local and regional economies. Hormozgan province, located in southern Iran covers Persian Gulf and Oman Sea ecological regions with unique global importance. Therefore, the present study was conducted to evaluate the environmental risk of harmful algal bloom, in the studied area. To this aim, to determine the extent of severity, probability and significance of each risk, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) (points 1–10) and the Analytical hierarchy process methods (AHP) were used. According to results, Harmful Algal Blooms effects on massive mortality of fish, disturbance in performance of Reverse osmosis (RO) plants for seawater desalination, damage to fisheries and aquaculture industry, creating job changes for the local fishermen, outbreak of seafood-borne illness, with the values of 0.861, 0.774, 0.771, 0.702, 0.661, were reported as the most important environmental risk of the harmful algal bloom in the studied area, respectively. Hence, to prevent, and reduce environmental risks, suggestions were presented.