How Probiotics Can Save East Coast Shellfish Hatcheries from Vibrio
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Saving Seafood] - January 13, 2016 -
Bob Rheault was having an open house at his young shellfish hatchery, so he arrived early in the morning with bottles of wine and plates of cheese. That’s when he noticed he had a problem.
“There was an odd substance floating on the surface of the tanks,” Rheault says. He looked through a microscope, “and there were no bodies to be seen … just empty shells with bacteria climbing all over them.
The problem of bacterial infections in hatcheries has been worsening over the past decade as the waters of the Northeast warm.
Researchers have now found a tool to fight the Vibrio bacteria: probiotics. Teams at both NOAA’s Milford Laboratory in Connecticut and the University of Rhode Island (URI) have harvested beneficial bacteria from healthy adult oysters that can help oyster larvae fight off bacterial infections. And the URI researchers are exploring the possibility that a similar concoction could help treat lobster shell disease as well.
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