The LSU AgCenter has patented a vaccine that could be a shot in the arm for the hybrid striped bass industry to return to the Louisiana coast. Ron Thune of the AgCenter’s Department of Veterinary Science developed the vaccine that immunizes fish against photobacteriosis, a disease that all but wiped out the fledgling hybrid striped bass industry on the coast in the 1990s. The disease is caused by a marine bacterium that lives in brackish or salt water but does not affect striped bass grown in fresh water, Thune said. Fish farmers in Louisiana and surrounding states began raising hybrid striped bass in ponds in the 1980s. Because the fish can live in both fresh water and salt water, by 1990 hybrid striped bass spread to the coastal marshes of Louisiana where fish were raised in cages and raceways. The hybrid fish are a cross between striped bass, which are saltwater fish that travel up rivers to spawn in fresh water, and freshwater white bass. “Raising them on the coast did well until the disease arrived,” Thune said, adding that hybrid striped bass grow fast and are more profitable than catfish.
Rick Bogren
(This article was a news brief in the summer 2002 issue of Louisiana Agriculture.) |