Bacterial Flora of Seven Species of Fish Collected at Rongelap and Eniwetok Atolls

Abstract

A very extensive literature exists concerning the normal bacterial flora of marine fish species common to the northern ocean areas, i.e., the North Sea (Stewart, 1932; Aschehoug and Vesterhus, 1943; Reay and Shewan, 1949; Liston, 1956, 1957; Georgala, 1958), the North Atlantic (Reed and Spence, 1929; Gibbons, 1934a, 1934b; Dyer, 1947), and the North Pacific (Hunter, 1920; Fellers, 1926; Snow and Beard, 1939; Kiser, 1944; Kiser and Beckwith, 1942, 1944; Liston, 1959). These studies of the aerobic heterotrophic bacterial flora found on a number of different species of northern ocean fishes have shown that, while the generic distribution of the bacteria associated with freshly caught marine fish may vary quantitatively, the following genera predominate fairly consisteritly: Pseudomonas, Achromobacter, Flavobacterium, and Micrococcus. The genera Proteus, Sarcina, Bacillus, Corynebacterium, and Serratia are encountered less often. Some investigators have discussed the biochemistry of the organisms isolated from marine fish (viz., Thjotte and Somme, 1943) but most of the physiology and biochemistry is limited to only a few properties studied for classifying the microorganisms. A somewhat more extensive discussion of the anabolic and catabolic aspects of the bacterial groups found on North Pacific fish has been given by Colwell (1961) and Liston and Colwell (1962).