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The purpose of this paper was to investigate the physicochemical attributes of the Ogu Creek serving the Onne Ports in Port Harcourt, which is impacted by ports transport activities, for establishment of its pollution status.

In situ measurements were made at six sampling points for water temperature, pH, salinity, dissolved oxygen (DO), turbidity, and conductivity with HORIBA U‐10 Water Quality Checker and for total dissolved solids (TDS) with HACH conductivity/TDS meter. Other parameters were determined using standard methods. The principal components analysis (PCA), test of homogeneity in mean variance and Pearson correlation were used to analyze data.

The lower range of pH (5.28), the upper ranges of Al (1.20 mg/L) and Fe (3.25 mg/L), as well as the concentrations of Cd (0.022±0.011 mg/L) and Cu (0.08±0.01 mg/L) were outside the Federal Ministry of Environment's permissible limits for aquatic life. Four PCs, which were most correlated with essential pollution indicator physicochemical parameters and ions formed the extraction solution that contributed a cumulative 95.258 per cent variability in the original 22 parameters. Of the associated shipping activities, garbage generation on board accounted for the highest waste volume (97.13 per cent) and bilging impacted hardness (r=0.992) at p<0.01, bunkering impacted Pb ion concentrations (r=0.948), accidental dumping of effluents impacted water temperature (r=0.881), and fish trawling and deliberate dumping of effluents each impacted DO (r=0.896 and 0.957, respectively) of water column at p<0.05.

Bilging, bunkering, dumping of effluents and fish trawling activities constituted pollution in the waterway.

All data relating the physicochemical parameters of the waterway were generated from laboratory analyses by the authors.