Enzymes responsible for the digestion of food protein by juvenile green abalone (Haliotis fulgens) were studied when fed algae or a sea grass (Phyllospadix torreyi) naturally occurring in the habitat. The effect of food on the composition and activity of the enzymes was also evaluated. Acid, serine proteinases and aminopeptidases, as confirmed by pH profile of activity, specific inhibition and ...

The European sea bass, Dicentrarchus labrax, is a high market value marine and coastal species which feeds on small fish (TORTONESE, 1986). It inhabits coastal waters between 10 and 100 m in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and the European and African Atlantic coasts (North to Scandinavian waters and South to Morocco) (MOREIRA et al., 1992; LLORIS, 2002). It is an important species for the Mediter...

Staphylococcus aureus is a major bacterial pathogen which causes clinical infections and food poisoning. This bacterium produces a group of twenty-one enterotoxins (SEs). These enterotoxins have two separate but related biological activities. They cause gastroenteritis and function as superantigens that activate large numbers of T cells. The current method for detection of enterotoxins activity...

Seabirds are prominent and highly visible components of marine ecosystems that will be affected by global climate change. The Bering Sea region is particularly important to seabirds; populations there are larger and more diverse than in any similar region in North America—over 90% of seabirds breeding in the continental United States are found in this region. Seabirds, so named because they spe...

Diverse faunal groups inhabit deep-sea sediments over much of Earth's surface, but our understanding of how interannual-scale climate variation alters sediment community components and biogeochemical processes remains limited. The vast majority of deep-sea communities depend on a particulate organic carbon food supply that sinks from photosynthetically active surface waters. Variations in food ...

Changes in enzymatic activities and protein content of leg muscle and hepatopancreas tissue of two deep-sea crabs were studied after 34 days of food deprivation. Geryon longipes and Bythograea thermydron are the most abundant deep-sea crab species in their respective environment. Geryon longipes dwells on the middle and lower slope of the northwestern Mediterranean Sea and has a bathymetric ran...

Deep-sea benthic foraminifera live in the largest habitat on Earth, constitute an important part of its benthic biomass, and form diverse assemblages with common cosmopolitan species. Modern deep-sea benthic foraminiferal assemblages are strongly infl uenced by events affecting their main food source, phytoplankton (a relationship known as bentho-pelagic coupling). Surprisingly, benthic foramin...

Deep-sea shrimp fishery operations in Kerala were initiated since 1999 with high landings which subsequently dropped considerably. The present study assesses the different problems faced by trawloperators in deep-sea shrimp fishing operations. High operational cost, high risk and efforts, lack of skilled and trained manpower, low market price realisation, abundance of discards, poor quality of ...

A large-scale outbreak of food poisoning caused by consumption of skimmed milk powder contaminated with staphylococcal enterotoxin A (SEA) occurred in Japan. No viable Staphylococcus aureus was detected in the skimmed milk powder, however, sea and nuc genes of S. aureus were detected in it by PCR. The number of S. aureus in skimmed milk powder was estimated by quantitative real-time PCR.