a number of studies have attempted to demonstrate the antibacterial properties of skin mucus from different species of fish such as turbot, atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, gold fish, seabass, seabream, flounder, barramundi, cichlid and yellowtail . however, most have suffered from alack of definitive data concerning the virulence of the organisms used for in vitro assessment of antibacterial pr...

In fish, the first line of defense against infectious microorganisms is based on a broad range of nonspecific humoral and cellular immune mechanisms ("innate immunity") which without prior specific activation can act in forming a more static barrier (Fish Shellfish Immunol. 10 (2000) 243; Dev. Comp. Immunol. 25 (2001) 827). This natural resistance is normally effective enough to protect fish fr...

remained relatively stable over the past two decades while fish production through aquaculture has progressivly increased. The Indian fisheries sector has come a long way since independence (Figure 1) and has contributed immensely to the food basket of the country, with annual production levels of over six million tonnes of fish and shellfish from capture fisheries and aquaculture. India is the...

Because seafood consumption is moderate-to-high in Spain, allergic reactions to seafood such as fish, crustacea and mollusc are fairly frequent. The clinical features of these reactions depend on the implicated species and whether the reaction is provoked by ingestion, handling or vapor inhalation. Because different species have common antigenic structures, cross-sensitization is frequent, espe...

We speciated arsenic compounds in marine fish and shellfish from two islands of the United States Territory of American Samoa in the South Pacific, and found that inorganic arsenic occurred as a minor fraction. The proportion of inorganic arsenic was generally far below the levels of prevailing assumptions typically used in human health risk assessments when only total arsenic is analysed. Fish...

Organisms into which heterologous DNA (transgene) has been artificially introduced and integrated in their genomes are called transgenics. Since the mid 1980s, many species of transgenic fish have been produced by introducing desired foreign DNA into unfertilized or newly fertilized eggs by microinjection or electro-poration. More recently, transgenic finfish, shellfish, and crustaceans have al...

BACKGROUND: Oysters are filter-feeding bivalve molluscs that form cohesive reefs in estuarine and near-coastal waters. In addition to their economic value, oysters can exert a powerful influence on water quality, phytoplankton productivity, and nutrient cycling (Dame 1996; Ulanowicz and Tuttle 1992); they also affect current patterns, flow, and sedimentation rates (Lenihan 1999). Oyster reefs o...

Stringer et al. (1) report 149 mollusk shells, 5 seal bones, 3 dolphin bones, and 3 fish bones from Mousterian layers in 2 caves on Gibraltar. From this they argue that the Neanderthals had ‘‘focused coastal visits. . . repeated during particular times, possibly seasonal’’ (p. 14323) and that in this respect they surpassed their South African Middle Stone Age (MSA) contemporaries. However, the ...