Epidemioligical And Aetiological Studies On The Skin Ulcerative Syndrome Of Cultured Sea Cucumber Apostichopus Japonicus And Analysis Of The Pathogens Reservoir

In recent years, sea cucumber farming has been developed rapidly along the northern coast. The total culture area of sea cucumber has reached 40,000 hm2 and the production valued 10 billion yuan, which has become an important industry. However, with the rapid development and intensive culture, various diseases appeared. Especially the skin ulceration syndrom was the most important diseases during the overwintering cultivation and out-door cultivation, which caused serious economic losses and becoming one of the limiting factors in the sustainable development of this industry.From 2003 to 2005, we carried out the epidemiological study on the skin ulcerative syndrome of cultured sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus. The skin ulceration syndrom was the most important diseases during the medium rearing and outdoor cultivation stages. The infections could affect both young juveniles and adults. Its prevalence peaked at low temperature during December to March,sometimes it also occurred at high temperature of summer and autumn. The disease was widely spread with high infectious and lethal feature, often causing 90% mortality even total destruction. The syndrome displayed as anorexia, shaking head, mouth tumidity, viscera ejection, general atrophy, and skin ulceration. The disease was caused by bacterial. The reason and character of the disease was also studied.The paper carried out aetiological study of the skin ulceration syndrome during the overwintering medium rearing stage. We investigated the etiology of diseased sea cucumber from 5 farms. One bacterial strain named FP-1 was isolated from the infected sea cucumbers of three sea cucumber cultured farms, and it was always...