There is a growing interest for the use of coliphage as an alternative indicator to assess fecal pollution in recreational waters. Coliphage are a group of viruses that infect Escherichia coli and are considered as potential surrogates to infer the likely presence of enteric viral pathogens. We report the use of a dead-end hollow fiber ultrafiltration single agar layer method to enumerate F+ and somatic coliphage from surface waters collected from three Great Lake areas. At each location, three sites (two beaches; one river) were sampled five days a week over the 2015 beach season (n = 609 total samples). In addition, culturable E. coli and enterococci concentrations, as well as 16 water quality and recreational area parameters were assessed such as rainfall, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, pH, and ultra violet absorbance. Overall, somatic coliphage levels ranged from non-detectable to 4.39 log₁₀ plaque forming units per liter and were consistently higher compared to F+ (non-detectable to 3.15 log₁₀ PFU/L), regardless of sampling site. Coliphage concentrations weakly correlated with cultivated fecal indicator bacteria levels (E. coli and enterococci) at 75% of beach sites tested in study (r = 0.28 to 0.40). In addition, ultraviolet light absorption and water temperature were closely associated with coliphage concentrations, but not fecal indicator bacteria levels suggesting different persistence trends in Great Lake waters between indicator types (bacteria versus virus). Finally, implications for coliphage water quality management and future research directions are discussed.

人们越来越关注使用大肠杆菌噬菌体作为评估休闲水域粪便污染的替代指标。Coliphage是感染大肠杆菌的一组病毒，被认为是推断肠道病毒病原体可能存在的潜在替代物。我们报告了使用死胡同的中空纤维超滤单琼脂层方法来枚举从三个大湖地区收集的地表水中的F +和体细胞噬菌体。在2015年海滩季节，每个地点每周五天对三个地点（两个海滩；一个河流）进行采样（n = 609个总采样）。另外，可培养的大肠杆菌评估了肠球菌的浓度以及16种水质和娱乐场所的参数，例如降雨，浊度，溶解氧，pH和紫外线吸收率。总体而言，体细胞噬菌体水平范围从每升不可检测到4.39 log ₁₀噬菌斑形成单位，并且始终高于F +（不可检测到3.15 log ₁₀  PFU / L），而与采样地点无关。粪中的粪便浓度与培养的粪便指示菌水平（大肠杆菌（E. coli））弱相关和肠球菌）在研究中测试的海滩站点的75％（r = 0.28至0.40）。此外，紫外线的吸收和水温与大肠杆菌噬菌体的浓度密切相关，但粪便指示菌的水平却不相关，这表明五大湖水域在指示剂类型（细菌与病毒）之间存在不同的持久性趋势。最后，讨论了对大肠杆菌噬菌体水质管理的意义和未来的研究方向。