Abstract: Marine environment is one of those areas which show the dynamic fluxes encompassing half of the world’s population. PAHs are widespread environmental contaminants resulting from incomplete combustion of organic materials. Microbial degradation is the major route for its removal from the environment. The present study represents the assessment of PAHs from contaminated sites near Bhavnagar coast, Gujarat, India. The results showed that 2-3 rings containing LMW PAHs predominated over 4 rings containing HMW PAHs. Sources identified by using various diagnostic ratios, indicated pyrogenic and petrogenic source of contamination, due to ship breaking activities. In addition, the ecological risk assessment was carried out using RQNCs and RQMPCs. The results indicated that PAHs posed adverse ecological risk, which can due to ship breaking and petroleum transportation at the sites, providing to be harmful for marine biota and human health. Thus, elevated levels of ∑PAHs need to be treated by devising effective bioremediation strategies. Furthermore, selective isolation approach was employed to isolate multiple PAHs degrading bacteria and identified as Mycobacterium litorale. Furthermore, optimization of BH medium components, were primarily screened using Plackett-Burman (PB) design, followed by RSM and ANN approaches. The optimization resulted in, 51.53% fluoranthene degradation on 3rd day. The ANN model had been developed as it is an efficient method for empirical modeling and optimization, especially for non-linear systems. The predictive capabilities of RSM and ANN model were compared on the basis of R2, RMSE, and MAPE values. The R2 values for predicted models RSM and ANN were 0.988 and 0.997, respectively; RMSE and MAPE value for RSM and ANN were 0.940 & 0.3234; and 1.432 & 0.5715. Therefore, study would surely lay the foundation for bioremediation and ecological restoration of our coastal sites.
