Use of microcosms to determine the survival of the fish pathogen Tenacibaculum maritimum in seawater

The survival of the fish pathogen Tenacibaculum maritimum in different seawater microcosms was investigated during 160 days. The persistence of culturable cells was greater in sterile than in natural seawater. Standard plate counts showed that T. maritimum survived in sterile seawater for more than 5 months at concentration around 10³ cfu ml^-1. However, T. maritimum proved to be very labile in non-sterile seawater, rendering culturable cells no longer than 5 days. These results were confirmed when DNA-based methods were applied. Regardless of the microcosms used, epifluorescence microscopy counts remained at about 10⁶ cells ml^-1 throughout the experiment, even though we can not distinguish T. maritimum in the case of non-sterile microcosms. Resuscitation assays with addition of fresh medium to non-sterile microcosms did not favour the recovery of T. maritimum on solid media. Although morphological changes from filamentous to spheres were observed after 3 days in the non-sterile microcosms, in the case of the sterile microcosms this change was observed at the sixth day. The biochemical, physiological, serological and genetic characteristics were unaffected in the sterile microcosms. The overall results contribute to a better understanding of the behaviour of T. maritimum in natural seawater and suggest that the aquatic bacterial population play an important role in the survival of this fish pathogen.