Tenacibaculosis in Norwegian farmed Atlantic salmon

• Main Author: Småge, Sverre Bang
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: The University of Bergen 2018
• Subjects: Norway; Atlantic salmon; Northern Norway
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1956/19440

Tenacibaculosis is a bacterial ulcerative skin disease of many economically important farmed fish species worldwide caused by members of genus Tenacibaculum. For the Norwegian salmon farming industry, however, tenacibaculosis was not recognized as an important disease until 2010. Since then, the increased use of media supporting Tenacibaculum growth has resulted in the identification of Tenacibaculum spp. from a large number of outbreaks of skin lesions/ulcers. Bacterial skin infections that cause skin lesions/ulcers in farmed Atlantic salmon are not only important fish health and welfare issues that needs to be solved, but also cause significant economic losses. From investigations of tenacibaculosis outbreaks in the northernmost parts of Norway, a Tenacibaculum sp. strain was repeatedly identified over several years at multiple farms. Sequence similarity analysis showed that this Tenacibaculum sp. strain was most closely related to Tenacibaculum dicentrarchi, but different enough to constitute a novel Tenacibaculum species. A polyphasic investigation showed that this was indeed a novel species in the genus Tenacibaculum, for which the name Tenacibaculum finnmarkense was proposed. The delineation of T. finnmarkense and T. dicentrarchi has since been further demonstrated by whole genome analysis. In September 2015, two separate outbreaks of tenacibaculosis occurred at two Atlantic salmon farms in Northern Norway. The events resulted in major losses of smolts newly transferred into seawater. Prior to, and during the outbreaks, large numbers of small jellyfish, identified as Dipleurosoma typicum (Boeck) were observed in the vicinity of the farms and inside the net-pens. During these outbreaks, T. finnmarkense was found to be the dominant bacteria associated with the outbreaks. Moreover it was shown that D. typicum were unlikely to be a vector for T. finnmarkense. However, it was shown that the jellyfish caused direct damage to the fish’s skin which likely exacerbated the bacterial infection by allowing an entry ...