The Pathogenicity and Biochemical Characteristics of Vibrio harveyi Isolated from the Pacific Abalone, Haliotis discus hannai
Recently, mass mortality of the young abalone Haliotis discus hannai has occurred in commercial seed production farms in Korea. The mortality rate was above 50% of the total cultured organisms in the farm, and the shell length of the moribund organisms was about 3cm. The mortal phenomenon was that the young abalones were weakly scattered on the bottom of the pond from the attachment matrix, or that they could not be moved back to their normal positions. The diseased farmed Pacific abalone had abdominal edema. From the edema in the moribund individuals, three bacterial strains were isolated and all the strains were identified as Vibrio harveyi. These strains were compared with thirty six strains isolated from the fish. The results was that the Vibrio harveyi from the fish were sorted into genogroup A or B; however, the three strains of the diseased farmed Pacific abalone were sorted into genogroup A and the new genogroup C. The identical mortality and pathological symptoms of the naturally infected organisms were reproduced by artificial infection with WA AG-1 and WA CS-5 strains. The LD50 of WA AG-1 and WA CS-5 were each 1.0×103 cfu animal-1 and 1.7×104 cfu animal-1.