Diseases
Oysters are subject to various diseases which can reduce harvests and severely deplete local populations. Disease control focuses on containing infections and breeding resistant strains and is the subject of much ongoing research.
- Dermo (Perkinsus marinus) is caused by a protozoan parasite. It is a prevalent pathogen, causes massive mortality and poses a significant economic threat to the oyster industry. The disease is not a direct threat to humans consuming infected oysters. Dermo first appeared in the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, and until 1978 it was believed to be caused by a fungus. While it is most serious in warmer waters, it has gradually spread up the east coast of the United States.
- MSX (Multinucleated Sphere X) is caused by the protozoan Haplosporidium nelsoni, generally seen as a multi-nucleated plasmodium. It is infectious and causes heavy mortality in the Eastern Oyster; survivors, however, develop resistance and can help propagate resistant populations. MSX is associated with high salinity and water temperatures. MSX was first noted in Delaware Bay in 1957 and is now found all up and down the east coast of the United States. Evidence suggests that it was brought to the United States when Crassostrea gigas, a Japanese oyster variety, was introduced to Delaware Bay.
Read more about this topic: Oyster
Famous quotes containing the word diseases:
“The fantasies inspired by TB in the last century, by cancer now, are responses to a disease thought to be intractable and capricious—that is, a disease not understood—in an era in which medicine’s central premise is that all diseases can be cured.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“But what is quackery? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing his body alone. There is need of a physician who shall minister to both soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls between two stools.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)