Unprecedented changes in demography, industrialization and infrastructural developments have caused extensive pollution and contamination of water resources. There is need for reviewing existing guidelines and their stringent enforcement.

Multivariate statistical techniques, such as Cluster Analysis (CA), Discriminant Analysis (DA), and Principal component analysis (PCA) were applied to evaluate the temporal/spatial variations in marine water quality of Mumbai and to identify pollution sources. Hierarchical CA grouped 12 sampling sites into three clusters of similar water quality characteristics.