In the maritime vessels industry, corrosion attack towards the integral parts of the ship, such as ballast tanks is unavoidable. Additionally, Microbiologically Influenced Corrosion (MIC) can form greater risk to this corrosion process, resulting in economic loss and safety and health issues to the ship operators. To investigate MIC in ballast tanks of ship, we characterized biofilm bacterial communities from the corrosive environments inside ship ballast tanks. We observed corrosion-associated community profile that was highly diverse from the non-corrosive one. The structure of this community, however, differed substantially between ship, reflecting unique environmental conditions within each ballast tanks that feed and sustain this communities. We demonstrated that the identified bacterial taxa that became dominant in corrosion spots, were initially present in low abundance in non-corrosive spots. This points to the important of the presence of such low frequency microbes in shifting process of the community that could best survive in corroded areas within the tanks. This study showed that employing a molecular approach for the detection and identification of MIC-associated bacteria can aid more effective monitoring, treatment and prevention strategy of MIC in ship ballast tanks and marine vessels in particular, and for marine engineering in general.
