AccScience Publishing / AJWEP / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/AJWEP025370290
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Long-term monitoring of a coastal marine ecosystem after landfill remediation using oxidative stress biomarkers and heavy metal analysis in mussels

Aleksandra Istomina1* ,  Victor Chelomin1 ,  Olesya Elovskaya1 ,  Ludmila Kolosova1 ,  Avianna Zhukovskaya1 ,  Kirill Aksentov1
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1 Laboratory of Marine Ecology and Marine Toxicology, V.I. Il’ichev Pacific Oceanological Institute Far Eastern Branch Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok, Russia
AJWEP, 025370290 https://doi.org/10.36922/AJWEP025370290
Received: 14 September 2025 | Revised: 15 October 2025 | Accepted: 20 October 2025 | Published online: 10 November 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Gornostay Bay, located near the city of Vladivostok (Far East of Russia), has long served as a site for the placement and operation of a solid domestic waste landfill. The functioning of the landfill resulted in extensive and complex pollution of the coastal water area. Remediation and closure measures in 2010 were expected to improve the ecological condition of the bay. This study demonstrates the application of biochemical markers of oxidative stress as indicators of metabolic recovery processes in marine invertebrates, using bivalves as a model group. The results demonstrated a time-dependent decrease in the concentrations of potentially toxic elements in mussel tissues and a reduction in oxidative lipid degradation to control levels. These findings indicate an improvement in the quality of the marine environment in the years following the 2010 landfill remediation activities. Based on molecular indicators of oxidative stress and the content of heavy metals in the digestive gland and gills of Crenomytilus grayanus from polluted Gornostay Bay, the study concludes that a gradual restoration of the marine environment has occurred.

Graphical abstract
Keywords
Biomonitoring
Potentially toxic elements
Landfill
Marine environmental remediation
Mussels
Oxidative stress
Funding
This research was supported by the V.I. Il’ichev Pacific Oceanological Institute, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, through the research project “Ecological and Biogeochemical Processes in Ecosystems of the Far Eastern Seas”(project number 124022100077-0).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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Asian Journal of Water, Environment and Pollution, Electronic ISSN: 1875-8568 Print ISSN: 0972-9860, Published by AccScience Publishing
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