It is a myth that seawater quickly kills pathogens; coastal waters in particular are rich in nutrients that enable bacteria to survive despite the salt.
V. vulnificus is an opportunistic human pathogen transmitted from seawater, raw oyster, and shellfish.
Sessile marine organisms are exposed to numerous pathogens and predators in seawater and have developed effective natural chemical defenses [ 18, 19].
Combining inoculated fragments from all time points, we compared spectral and landscape metrics between fresh seawater control, negative bacterial control, and pathogen treatments based on two-way ANOVAs with treatment and colony as random effects.
This free-living pathogen can be found in seawater around the world.
In contrast, putative pathogens that were inoculated into sterile seawater without corals maintained a constant density of viable counts in suspension throughout the experiment (Fig. 4A), eliminating the possibility that bacteria died from the seawater itself or may have settled on the sides or bottom of aquaria.
These findings suggest that such specific MLVA profile is quite common in swine and human sources; however, they also highlight the need to deeply investigate the role of seawater environment in the spread of this zoonotic pathogen.
Finally, both putative pathogens and control bacteria were inoculated into four seawater tanks (per bacterial treatment) lacking coral fragments to test their ability to survive and remain suspended in the water column for the experiment's duration.
During the entire experiment, accumulation of wastes and pathogens was avoided by replacing the tanks with fresh seawater every day.
In various seawater places around Hong Kong where untreated sewage is discharged, several enterobacterial pathogens were simultaneously detected such as Salmonella and V. cholerae (26 ).
Changes in the chemical composition of seawater may affect coral disease levels, either by favoring the growth of pathogens and/or decreasing the resistance of the coral animal to infection.
