Progress 10/01/16 to 09/30/19
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences for this project have included the shellfish industry, regulatory agencies, environmental groups, students, public citizens, extension specialists and fellow scientists interested in shellfish safety. We have applied our research in work directly with the shellfish industry, conducting research with several NH oyster farmers, Spinney Creek Shellfish Inc. of Eliot ME, Mook Seafarms of Walpole, ME, and with several MA and CT oyster farmers through our extended work with state agencies in those states. We have continued to engage industry, often in collaboration with extension specialists, indirectly through small meetings with ME and NH growers and other industry groups, and in larger joint meetings with regulatory agencies and at science-industry-regulatory agency seminars and conferences, including the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference (ISSC) annual meeting. We also presented our research to meetings attended by similar audiences at the Northeast Shellfish Sanitation Association Vibrio workshop in April 2019, the New Hampshire Aquaculturists annual meeting in February 2019, the National Shellfisheries Assn. meeting in March 2019, and the 12th International Conference on Molluscan Shellfish Safety in September 2019 in Ensenda, Mexico. We have also shared our findings with fellow marine scientists and the public at the JointStatisticalMeetings AnnualConferencein July 2019 and at the 2019 Maine Coastal Pollution Research and Management Workshop in February 2019. We continue to maintain productive collaborations with public health and resource state agencies in NH, MA, ME and CT. These interactions include small group and medium-size seminar meetings with agency personnel interested in our approaches for detection of total populations and pathogenic strains of Vibrio species, our strategies for pre-harvest practices and post-harvest treatment to reduce Vibrio levels, and working together to design effective monitoring and research studies to develop the capacity for forecasting risk conditions related to pathogenic Vibrio populations for shellfish harvest management. We have provided information on the public health significance, ecology, and management of pathogenic Vibrio species to environmental groups, students, universities (UNH, MIT) and the public via seminars, classes, and small group meetings and discussions, and in press releases, and helped the State of NH to modify new policies to restrict importation of seed shellfish from regional areas that have suffered shellfish-borne human illnesses from Vibrio parahaemolyticus infections. We have led several proposal-writing efforts on topics that are closely related to our project research. Finally, we have discussed our research findings and plans with fellow scientists via presentations at international, national, state and local meetings, teleconferences, and publications. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has continued to serve as an opportunity for several undergraduate and graduate students to learn how to conduct research in the field, laboratory and with computers. The UNH Illumina high throughput sequencing facility has become a powerful tool for our studies of pathogenic Vibrio species. Through the work of students on this and other related projects, we have continued to develop analysis pipelines for effectively analyzing the genomic content of microbial communities and strains of pathogenic and non-pathogenic Vibrio species. We have established some useful protocols and baseline work for these microbial analyses that are being used both for ongoing project data analysis and for the training of undergraduate students. A current graduate student-Meghan Hartwick, has successfully used this tool to analyze microbial communities in oysters and analyze different strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus. Lia Tosiello is another graduate student who augmented her social science-focused MS research with some microbiology including application of these methods to determine differences in microbial communities of juvenile versus adult farmed oysters. This has been identified as a need by the NH Vibrio Working Group in relation to the importation of seed oysters from outside NH, and Ms. Tosiello conducted a survey to determine how oyster growers have been impacted with this policy and state regulations in general. Undergraduate student Elizabeth Martin was awarded a Doyle Fellowship from the NH Sea Grant Program and learned to culture and experiment with predatory bacteria that can control populations of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in oysters. Meghan Hartwick and Lia Tosiello presented their research results at the National Shellfisheries Assn. Annual conference in New Orleans, LA, and Megan also presented at the annual Joint Stats conference in Denver, CO. Meghan and Lia have also been included at other professional conferences and small group meetings with shellfish industry and regulators for informal presentations and discussions of their research. Meghan has continued to build her skills with statistical models and database analysis tools, through several key classes and workshops at UNH that she has used to develop both ecosystem and predictive risk models. She has taken the lead in training undergraduate and fellow graduate students in these skills and in the identification of plankton taxa from estuarine samples. Through ongoing collaborations with faculty and students at UNH and other institutions, we continue to optimize procedures for effective sampling, processing, and analysis of estuarine bacterial, benthic and plankton communities. Meghan Hartwick has also been able to provide training opportunities for undergraduate students from Keene State and Tufts University. Our research findings have also served to inform public health and resource agency personnel, shellfish growers, students and public citizens about risks and how to avoid them so as to enjoy shellfish consumption. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The project results have been disseminated through a variety of mechanisms to a variety of interested communities. We have continued to work with extension specialists from UNH to inform oyster farmers in the Northeast about harvest management options to reduce risks from pathogenic Vibrios to consumers. We have continued to inform the NH Shellfish Program Manager and FDA in several local, regional and national meetings about our research findings to help them optimize best management practices for oyster growers to reduce risks from Vibrios in their harvest practices. Regional shellfish industry and state regulatory agencies were the targeted audiences for presentations about pathogenic Vibrios at the Northeast Aquaculture Conference and Exposition in January 2019 and the Northeast Shellfish Sanitation Association annual meeting in April 2019, shellfish growers of New Hampshire were the audience for a presentation at the NH Marine Aquaculturists annual meeting held by NHDES and NHDHHS in February 2019, shellfish regulators were the audience at a Coastal Pollution Research and Management Workshop in Maine in February 2019, national shellfish industry, researchers and regulatory agencies were the audiences for presentations by the PI and by graduate students Meagan Hartwick and Lia Tosiello at the National Shellfisheries Assn/World Aquaculture Society meeting in April, 2019, international shellfish safety scientists, regulators and industry were the audience at the 12th International Conference on Molluscan Shellfish Safety in September 2019, and by PhD student Meagan Hartwick to national environmental model scientists for a presentation at the JointStatisticalMeetings AnnualConference in July 2019. Several meetings with regional (NH, ME, MA, CT) shellfish resource and public health agencies were held during the past year to discuss ongoing and emerging issues and to provide them with research findings from this and related projects at UNH. One ongoing meeting has been with the NH interagency Vibrio Working Group, who has decided, based to a large degree on our ongoing research results, to prohibit shellfish seed importation from regional areas outside of NH where V. parahaemolyticus illnesses have occurred. The research findings were also disseminated to fellow UNH scientists, students and administrators at seminars presented by PhD student Meghan Hartwick in the Molecular, Cellular and Biomedical Sciences Department during Fall 2017/Winter 2018 semesters. The PI also facilitated a panel discussion about managing Vibrios in shellfish at the National Shellfisheries Assn. annual meeting in 2019. Finally, undergraduate student Elizabeth Martin was featured in an interview by the UNH- Wildcat Summer program: https://unhwildcats.com/news/2019/6/28/womens-skiing-wildcat-summer-elizabeth-martin.aspx What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Oyster aquaculture in northern New England has realized incredible increases in the number of producers and overall production in the past 10 years, yet the associated economic benefits are threatened by the northward emergence and increased incidence of pathogenic bacteria, specifically Vibrio species, that are becoming more prevalent as conditions change in our region. V. parahaemolyticus-borne illnesses areby far the most important Vibrio species, causing a significant number of illnesses in consumers of oysters from New England states. We stay in close contact with the Shellfish Program Manager in NH as well as his peers in Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, where the findings of our research are being used to improve their public health risk management approaches specific to their state conditions. The major impact of this project is providing information toshellfish growers and regulators that allowsthem in near real-time to adjust culture and harvest practices that protect the health of shellfish consumers while minimizing costs to the industry. We have successfully developed risk forecasting capacity at a harvest area scale that can be used anywhere in New England. Our continuous refinement of methods for both monitoring pathogenic Vibrio species in NH coastal waters and evaluating pre and post-harvest practices to minimize health risks have also served as models for other states to adopt. Our latest methods for detecting the strains of V. parahaemolyticus that actually cause disease are also being used at varying scales to help NH and our partner states to better track and confirm that these strains remain problematic and in need of management. Our newer findings are currently being communicated to the NH and other state shellfish programs to see if there are new ways to improve regional risk assessment approaches. This research project focused on the development of ecosystem models to improve risk prediction to prevent shellfish borne Vibrio parahaemolyticus illnesses in consumers. PhD dissertation (Dr. Meagan Hartwick) has been completed and one paper has been published on forecasting models. These results have provided valuable, region-specific knowledge about conditions that can be used to forecast total Vibrio parahaemolyticus concentrations and the models and overall approach are now being considered for adoption by regional shellfish program managers, public health agencies and the shellfish industry. The project's results are also being used to inform improved management strategies for preharvest practices based on how climate and ecosystem conditions influence Vibrio associated health risks in harvested oysters. For Objective 1, we continued to conduct monitoring of V. parahaemolyticus populations in oysters, water, plankton, suspended solids, and sediments at two sites in the Great Bay estuary monthly through December in 2018 and monthly to bi-weekly in 2019 from April through September, including a membrane filtration approach for enumerating V. parahaemolyticus populations in water that we adopted in 2018. We have found this approach to be comparable to results from traditional multiple tube fermentation and most probable number methods. We continue to maintain a database for V. parahaemolyticus populations in different growing area ecosystem matrices, along with water, ecosystem and climatic conditions at the time of sampling and in between, and this is stored on several computers and in docs.google.com. This includes information on stored isolates and data on pathogenic genetic marker detection. Results for 2019 show how V. parahaemolyticus populations emerged slower during a colder than normal spring and early summer compared to past years, then concentrations peaked at levels similar to other years during a warmer than normal July-August, and declined thereafter as expected. There has been an incremental increase in V.parahaemolyticus concentrations from 2007 to 2018, with higher population-level detection becoming more frequent during July-August. For Objective 3, water temperature remains to be the most significant variable affecting V. parahaemolyticus populations, but we have also further confirmed that pH and salinity are also significant. Forecast models most successful in capturing trends, seasonality and data variability included factors reflecting photoperiod and day of study, both of which are useful, transferable tools for use in other areas. In addition, the occurrence of hemolysin positive V. parahaemolyticus strains appears to be increasing in NH coastal waters, with infrequent thermostable direct hemolysin (TDH) positive, more common TDH-related hemolysin (TRH) positive strains and a few TDH/TRH positive strains. All marker-positive isolated strains have been further analyzed and some appear to be related to some pathogenic strains identified from clinical strains in the region. For Objective 2, we are nearly finished with a paper on microbiome factors and have added new data on V. parahaemolyticus populations in paired juvenile and adult farmed oysters. Further modeling identified several phytoplankton that help to further explain variability in V. parahaemolyticus populations, and in the resulting models, orthophosphate also is significant. Another paper based on a reverse ecology approach to determine if association with different ecosystem matrices is a function of physiological differences between V. parahaemolyticus strains is also in preparation. The highlights of this reporting period were the continued application of our study findings to support policies at the State (NH) level for controlling shellfish importation, and having two major funded projects underway that expand what we have focused on with this project in more depth and across the Northeast in Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Hartwick, MA, EA Urquhart, CA Whistler, VS Cooper, EN Naumova, SH Jones. 2019. Forecasting Seasonal Vibrio parahaemolyticus Concentrations. in New England Shellfish. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 16(22) 4341 ;https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16224341
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Huang, T, W Wollheim, S Jones. Submitted. Removal of fecal indicator bacteria by river networks. Freshwater Science.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Mousavi, S, M Ghayoomi, S Jones. 2019. Compositional and Geo-Environmental Factors in Microbial Induced Partial Saturation. Environmental Geotechnics. https://doi.org/10.1680/jenge.18.00087
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Hartwick, MA. Forecasting Vibrio parahaemolyticus in a Changing Climate. PhD Dissertation. Molecular and Evolution Systems Biology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Meghan Hartwick, Audrey Berenson, Cheryl A. Whistler, Elena N. Naumova, Stephen H. Jones. In prep. The Seasonal Ecology of Vibrio parahaemolyticus and Plankton in a New Hampshire Estuary.
|
Progress 10/01/17 to 09/30/18
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences for this project have included the shellfish industry, regulatory agencies, environmental groups, students, public citizens, extension specialists and fellow scientists interested in shellfish safety. We have applied our research in work directly with the shellfish industry, conducting research with several NH oyster farmers, Spinney Creek Shellfish Inc. of Eliot ME, Mook Seafarms of Walpole, ME, and with several MA and CT oyster farmers through our extended work with state agencies in those states. We have continued to engage industry, often in collaboration with extension specialists, indirectly through small meetings with ME and NH growers and other industry groups, and in larger joint meetings with regulatory agencies and at science-industry-regulatory agency seminars and conferences, including the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference (ISSC) annual meeting in Myrtle Beach, SC. We also presented our research to meetings attended by similar audiences at the Northeast Shellfish Sanitation Association Vibrio workshop in April 2018, the Maine Shellfish Working Group meeting in October 2017, and the National Shellfisheries Assn. meeting in March 2018. We have also shared our findings with fellow marine scientists and the public at the 5 year Piscataqua Regional Estuaries Partnership State of Our Estuaries conference in December 2017 and at the 2018 LOCAL SOLUTIONS: Eastern Climate Preparedness Conference in May 2018. We continue to maintain productive collaborations with public health and resource state agencies in NH, MA, ME and CT. These interactions include small group and medium-size seminar meetings with agency personnel interested in our approaches for detection of total populations and pathogenic strains of Vibrio species, our strategies for post-harvest treatment to reduce Vibrio levels, and working together to design effective monitoring and research studies to develop the capacity for forecasting risk conditions related to pathogenic Vibrio populations for shellfish harvest management. We have provided information on the public health significance, ecology,and management of pathogenic Vibrio species to environmental groups, students, universities (UNH, Keene State Univ.) and the public via seminars, classes,and small group meetings and discussions, and in press releases, and helped the State of NH to draft new policies to restrict importation of seed shellfish from regional areas that have suffered shellfish-borne human illnesses from Vibrio parahaemolyticus infections. We have led several proposal-writing efforts, including two that were funded, on topics that are closely related to our project research. Finally, we have discussed our research findings and plans with fellow scientists via presentations at international, national, state and local meetings, teleconferences, and through publications. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has served as an opportunity for several undergraduate and graduate students to learn how to conduct research in the field, laboratory and with computers. The UNH Illumina high throughput sequencing facility has become a powerful tool for our studies of pathogenic Vibrio species. Through the work of students on this and other related projects, we have continued to develop analysis pipelines for effectively analyzing the genomic content of microbial communities and strains of pathogenic and non-pathogenic Vibrio species. We have established some useful protocols and baseline work for these microbial analyses that are being used both for ongoing project data analysis and for the training of undergraduate students. A current graduate student-Meghan Hartwick, and recent graduate students have successfully used this tool to analyze microbial communities in oysters and analyze different strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus. Lia Tosiello is another graduate student who is augmenting her social science-focused MS research with some microbiology has been applying these methods to determine differences in microbial communities of juvenile versus adult farmed oysters. This has been identified as a need by the NH Vibrio Working Group in relation to importation of seed oysters from outside NH. Undergraduate student Audrey Berenson was awarded a Doyle Fellowship from the NH Sea Grant Program and learned to use these tools to analyze populations of Vibrio parahaemolyticus associated with oyster relaying and with suspended solids. Meghan Hartwick presented her research results at the National Shellfisheries Assn. Annual conference in Seattle, WA, the annual Planetary health Alliance meeting in Edinburgh Scotland, and the International Conference in Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta, GA. Meghan has also been included at other professional conferences and small group meetings with shellfish industry and regulators for informal presentations and discussions of their research. Meghan has continued to build her skills with statistical models and database analysis tools, through several key classes and workshops at UNH that she has used to develop both ecosystem and predictive risk models. She has taken the lead in training undergraduate and fellow graduate students in these skills and in the identification of plankton taxa from estuarine samples. Through ongoing collaborations with faculty and students at UNH and other institutions, we continue to optimize procedures for effective sampling, processing, and analysis of estuarine bacterial, benthic and plankton communities. Meghan Hartwick has also been able to provide training opportunities for undergraduate students from Keene State and Tufts University. Our research findings have also served to inform public health and resource agency personnel, shellfish growers, students and public citizens about risks and how to avoid them so as to enjoy shellfish consumption. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The project results have been disseminated through a variety of mechanisms to a variety of interested communities. We have continued to work with extensions specialists from UNH to inform oyster farmers in the Northeast about harvest management options to reduce risks from pathogenic Vibrios to consumers. We have continued to inform the NH Shellfish Program Manager and FDA in several local meetings about our research findings to help them optimize best management practices for oyster growers to reduce risks from Vibrios in their harvest practices. Shellfish industry and state regulatory agencies were the targeted audiences for presentations about pathogenic Vibrios at the Northeast Shellfish Sanitation Association annual meeting in April 2018, shellfish growers of Maine were the audience for a presentation at the Maine Shellfish Working Group's annual meeting in October 2017, shellfish growers of NH were the audience at the NH Marine Aquaculture meeting held by NHDES and NHDHHS in early 2018, and a wide audience for a presentation at the Eastern Climate Preparedness Conference in May 2018. Several meetings with regional (NH, ME, MA, CT) shellfish resource and public health agencies were held during the past year to discuss ongoing and emerging issues and to provide them with research findings from this and related projects at UNH. One specific such set of ongoing meetings has been with the NH interagency Vibrio Working Group, who has decided, based to a large degree on our ongoing research results, to prohibit shellfish seed importation from regional areas outside of NH where V. parahaemolyticus illnesses have occurred. The research was also presented to a wide range of stakeholders in December 2017 at the 2018 NH Piscataqua Regional Estuaries Partnership 5-year State of Our Estuaries Conference. The PI was part of a panel that covered a range of estuarine health indicators that are not yet covered by the program's monitoring program. The research findings were also disseminated to fellow UNH scientists, students and administrators at seminars presented by PhD student Meghan Hartwick in the Molecular, Cellular and Biomedical Sciences Department during Fall 2017/Winter 2018 semesters. Meagan Hartwick and the PI also presented finding from this project at the National Shellfisheries Assn. annual meeting in 2018, the annual Planetary health Alliance meeting in Edinburgh Scotland, and the International Conference in Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta, GA. Finally, undergraduate student Audrey Berenson presented the results of her NHAES and UNH-SURF program supported studies at the UNH Undergraduate Research Conference, which was also featured as an article in the UNH Inquiry Journal: https://www.unh.edu/inquiryjournal/spring-2018/impact-suspended-particles-bacterial-concentrations-great-bay-estuary-oysters. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We are underway with finishing the monitoring for pathogenic Vibrio species in oysters, water, plankton, sediment and suspended solids at two sites in the Great Bay estuary through December 2018 and then we intend to continue this starting in April 2019 and continuing through September 2019. We have also finished sampling paired juvenile and adult oysters from a NH oyster farm. We will be wrapping up analysis of V. parahaemolyticus strains and microbial communities from archived samples through 2018, and ongoing sampling from 2019 from these ecosystem matrices for to provide a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of biological factors that may influence vibrio concentrations and potential risk. We will also analyze the most recent (2014-18) data using graduate student-developed analytical and statistical approaches for both risk and ecosystem modeling of V. parahaemolyticus population dynamics in estuaries, then use the model to see if the approach could forecast 2019 V. parahaemolyticus dynamics.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
This research project is focused on the development of ecosystem models to improve risk prediction to prevent shellfish-borne Vibrio parahaemolyticus illnesses in consumers. The results are providing shellfish program managers, public health agencies and the shellfish industry with a better understanding of this issue. The projects results are being used to inform improved management strategies for pre-harvest practices based on how climate and ecosystem conditions influence Vibrio-associated health risks in harvested oysters. For Objective 1, we continued to conduct monitoring of V. parahaemolyticuspopulations in oysters, water, plankton, suspended solids and sediments at two sites in the Great Bay estuary monthly through December in 2017 and monthly to bi-weekly in 2018 from April through September. In 2018 we added a membrane filtration approach for enumerating V. parahaemolyticuspopulations and have found comparable results to traditional multiple tube fermentation/most probable number methods. We continue to maintain a database for V. parahaemolyticuspopulations along with water, ecosystem and climatic conditions at the time of sampling and in between, and this is stored on several computers and in docs.google.com. We are in the process of finishing analysis of the 2018 samples, isolates and other data. Initial results show how V. parahaemolyticuspopulations have exhibited similar dynamics as in past years, emerging in mid-Spring, peaking at similar levels exhibited in other years during July-August, and declining thereafter. There has been an incremental increase in V.parahaemolyticusconcentrations from 2007 to 2018. Water temperature remains to be the most significant variable affecting V.parahaemolyticuspopulations, but we have also determined that pH and salinity are also significant. In addition, the occurrence of hemolysin positive V. parahaemolyticusstrains appears to be increasing, with infrequent thermostable direct hemolysin (TDH) positive, more common TDH-related hemolysin (TRH) positive strains and a few TDH/TRH positive strains. All marker-positive isolated strains are being analyzed to determine if they are pathogenic strains identified from clinical strains in the region. We have also confirmed that V. parahaemolyticus populations are enriched in association with plankton cells and suspended solids. For Objective 2, we nearly finished with a paper on microbiome factors and have added new data on parahaemolyticuspopulations in paired juvenile and adult farmed oysters. Samples are now being processed for 16S microbial community analysis to determine differences in life stages of oysters. A reverse ecology approach is also underway to determine if association with different ecosystem matrices is a function of physiological differences between V.parahaemolyticusstrains. Finally, our work related to Objective 3 continues as we make progress in refining our data analysis using a time-series approach to capture wide-ranging ecosystem and climate data that may be the most significant factors that affect V. parahaemolyticuspopulations. The highlights of this reporting period were the application of our study findings to set new policies at the State (NH) level for shellfish importation, and having two major proposals funded to expand what we have focused on with this project in more depth and across the Northeastin Maine, Massachusetts,and Connecticut.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Taylor, MA, JW Yu, TL Howell and SH Jones. 2018. Varying Success of Relaying To Reduce Vibrio parahaemolyticus Levels in Oysters (Crassostrea virginica). J. Food. Prot. 81: 659-669. doi:10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-17-363.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Rothenheber, D and SH Jones. 2018. Enterococcal Concentrations in a Coastal Ecosystem Are a Function of Fecal Source Input, Environmental Conditions, and Environmental Sources. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 84: 1-18. DOI:10.1128/AEM.01038-18.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Kirshen, P, S Aytur, J Hecht, A Walker, D Burdick, S Jones, N Fennessey, R Bourdeau, L Mather. 2018. Integrated urban water management applied to adaptation to climate change. Urban Climate 24: 247-263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2018.03.005
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Chadhain, SMN, JL Miller, JP Dustin, JP Tretheway, SH Jones, LA Launen. 2018. An assessment of the microbial community in an urban fringing tidal marsh with an emphasis on petroleum hydrocarbon degradative genes. Mar. Poll. Bull. 136: 351-364. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2018.09.002
|
Progress 10/01/16 to 09/30/17
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences for this project haveincluded the shellfish industry, regulatory agencies, environmental groups, students, public citizens, extension specialists and fellow scientists interested in shellfish safety. We have applied our research in work directly with the shellfish industry, conducting research with several NH oyster farmers, both Spinney Creek Shellfish Inc. of Eliot ME and Mook Seafarms of Walpole, ME, along with several MA and CT oyster farmers through our extended work with state agencies in those states. We have continued to engaged industry, often in collaboration with extension specialists, indirectly through small meetings with CT, MA, ME and NH growers and other industry groups, and in larger joint meetings with regulatory agencies and at science-industry-regulatory agency seminars and conferences, including the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference (ISSC) National Vibrio parahaemolyticus Workshop on September 6-7, 2017 - Baltimore, MD where, as a panel member, my audience included epidemiologists, federal and state public health and shellfish management agency personnel, fellow academic researchers, and shellfish industry farmers and others., We also presented our research to meetings attended by the same audiences at the Northeast Aquaculture Convention and Exposition Milford Aquaculture Seminar in Providence, RI in January 2017, the Northeast Shellfish Sanitation Association Vibrio workshop in April 2017 and the International Conference for Molluscan Shellfish Safety meeting in May, 2016 in Galway, Ireland. We have also shared our findings with fellow marine scientists and the public at the inaugural UNH School of Marine Science and Ocean Engineering seminar series in April 2017. We continue to maintain productive collaborations with public health and resource state agencies in NH, MA, ME and CT. These interactions include small group and medium size seminar meetings with agency personnel interested in our approaches for detection of total populations and pathogenic strains of Vibrio species, our strategies for post-harvest treatment to reduce Vibrio levels, and working together to design effective monitoring and research studies to develop the capacity for forecasting risk conditions related to pathogenic Vibrio populations for shellfish harvest management. We have provided information on the public health significance, ecology and management of pathogenic Vibrio species to environmental groups, students, universities (UNH, Keene State Univ.) and the public via seminars, classes and small group meetings and discussions, and in press releases. Finally, we have discussed our research findings and plans with fellow scientists via presentations at international, national, state and local meetings, teleconferences, and through publications. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has served as an opportunity for several undergraduate and graduate students to learn how to conduct research in the field, laboratory and on computers. The UNH Illumina high throughput sequencing facility has become a powerful tool for our studies of pathogenic Vibrio species. Through the work of this project and others we have continued to develop analysis pipelines for effectively analyzing the genomic content microbial communities and strains of pathogenic Vibrio species. We have established protocols and baseline work for these microbial analyses that are now being used for ongoing project work and training of undergraduate students. Graduate students Michael Taylor and Meghan Hartwick have both successfully used this tool to analyze microbial communities in oysters and analyze different strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus, respectively. Undergraduate student Audrey Berenson is also learning to use these tools to analyze populations of Vibrio parahaemolyticus associated with relaying and with suspended solids. Meghan Hartwick presented her research results at the International Conference for Molluscan Shellfish Safety meeting in Galway, Ireland. Meghan has also been included at other professional conferences and small group meetings with shellfish industry and regulators for informal presentations and discussions of their research. Meghan has continued to build her skills with statistical models and database analysis tools, through several key classes at UNH and some workshops at Tufts Univ. that she is using to develop predictive risk models and is training undergraduate and fellow graduate students in these skills. Meghan has trained several undergraduate students how to identify plankton taxa from estuarine samples. Through collaborations with faculty and students at UNH and other institutions, we have continued to optimize procedures for effective sampling, processing, and analysis of estuarine bacterial, benthic and plankton communities. In both field and laboratory studies, we continue to train graduate students to apply these procedures in their research. In turn, the graduate students have been able to provide training opportunities for undergraduate students from several UNH departments and from Keene State University. Our research findings have also served to inform public health and resource agency personnel, shellfish growers, students and public citizens about risks and how to avoid them so as to enjoy shellfish consumption. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The project results have been disseminated through a variety of mechanisms to a variety of interested communities. We have continued to work with extensions specialists from UNH to inform oyster farmers in the Northeast about harvest management options to reduce risks from pathogenic Vibrios to consumers. We have continued to inform the NH Shellfish Program Manager and FDA in several local meetings about our research findings to help them optimize best management practices for oyster growers to reduce risks from Vibrios in their harvest practices. Shellfish industry and state regulatory agencies were the targeted audiences for several scientific presentations about pathogenic Vibrios in the Northeast at the Milford Aquaculture Seminar/Northeast Aquaculture Conference and Exposition in January 2017 and at the Northeast Shellfish Sanitation Association meeting's Vibrio workshop in April 2017. The PI was gave the closing remarks and a graduate student-Meghan Hartwick, also presented at the 11th International Conference on Molluscan Shellfish Safety in Galway, Ireland in May 2017, where scientists, regulators and industry all participated in this conference. The PI was also an invited panelist at the two-day ISSC V. parahaemolyticus Workshop in September 2017 where all three types of participants-industry, scientists and regulators- were participants. Several meetings with regional shellfish resource and public health agencies were held during the past year to discuss ongoing and emerging issues and to provide them with research findings from this and related projects at UNH. One specific such set of ongoing meetings has been with the NH interagency Vibrio group to inform decisions they have to make related to shellfish seed importation from areas where V. parahaemolyticus illnesses have occurred. The research was also presented in April 2017 to an NSF review panel on the NH EPSCoR program as an example of applied research that addresses issues in the NH Seacoast. Several meetings and discussions were held via telephone and in person with NH Shellfish Program, NH Department of Health and Human Services, and US Food and Drug Administration personnel to discuss trends in Vibrio populations in NH coastal waters and strategies to reduce risk through managing harvest techniques. We also held numerous conversations with shellfish growers about post-harvest practices to reduce Vibrio-associated health risks, and with shellfish processers to help develop strategies to remove or reduce levels of Vibrios in harvested live oysters. All of these entities were present at the annual NH Marine Aquaculture meeting held by NHDES and NHDHHS in March 2017. The research findings were also disseminated to fellow UNH scientists, students and administrators at the inaugural UNH School of Marine Science and Ocean Engineering seminar series in April 2017. Finally, UNH students were provided information about project findings to help them learn about public health risks in marine ecosystems and learn of training opportunities in several early year classes in Environmental Engineering Microbiology during the Winter 2017 semester. Fellow graduate students and faculty in the Molecular, Cellular and Biomedical Sciences Department also learned about project findings as part of seminar presentations by PhD students Meghan Hartwick and Michael Taylor during Fall 2016/Winter 2017 semesters and during Summer 2017. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We are already underway with finishing the monitoring for pathogenic Vibrio species in oysters, water, plankton, sediment and suspended solids at two sites in the Great Bay estuary through December 2017 and then we intend to continue this starting in April 2018 and continuing through September 2018. We will be archiving samples from these ecosystem matrices for potential genome sequencing of the bacterial community to provide further depth of biological factors that may influence vibrio concentrations and potential risk. We intend to analyze more recent (2014-17) data using the developed analytical and statistical approach for modeling V. parahaemolyticus population dynamics.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
This research project is focused on the development of better risk prediction models to prevent shellfish-borne Vibrio parahaemolyticus illnesses in consumers. The results will help shellfish program managers, public health agencies and shellfish industry better understand and manage harvesting based on how climatic and ecosystem conditions can influence Vibrio-associated health risks in harvested oysters. For Objective 1, we continued to conduct monitoring of V. parahaemolyticuspopulations in oysters, water, plankton, suspended solids and sediments at two sites in the Great Bay estuary monthly through December in 2016 and monthly to bi-weekly in 2017 from April through September. In 2017 we added analysis of V. parahaemolyticuspopulations in suspended sediments to help inform our understanding of the link between sediment and oyster populations. We continue to maintain a database for V. parahaemolyticuspopulations along with water, ecosystem and climatic conditions at the time of sampling and in between, and this is stored on several computers and in docs.google.com. We are still catching up with the analyses for the 2017 samples, but initial results show how V. parahaemolyticuspopulations have exhibited similar dynamics as in past years, emerging in mid-Spring, peaking at levels similar to other years in July-August, and declining thereafter. The water temperatures in the estuary are lower than they were in the peak V. parahaemolyticusyears of 2012-13, and unlike the past two years,the populations appear to have reached lowerconcentrations than detected in those years. The occurrence of hemolysin positive V. parahaemolyticusstrains appears to be increasing, with rare TDH positive and more comment TRH positive strains. We have also confirmed for a third and fourth year that V. parahaemolyticus populations are enriched in association with plankton cells, and this year we have found elevated V. parahaemolyticusconcentrations in association with suspended solids in a complex relationship to suspended solids concentrations. Those results are still under analysis. For Objective 2, we are still analyzing prior year microbiome factors to both inform our field sampling and our analysis strategy. This has included collection and archiving samples of water, oyster tissue, sediments and plankton biomass during the reporting period.Once the final 2017 samples are collected and analysis completedwe will then choose samples for microbiome analysis this winter (2018). Finally, our work related to Objective 3 continues as we continue to refine our data analysis approach to fully capture all ecosystem and climate data and identify the significant factors that affect V. parahaemolyticuspopulations. A highlight of this reporting period was being invited to share our project findings at the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference (ISSC) National Vibrio parahaemolyticus Workshop on September 6-7, 2017 - Baltimore, MD, and to help write up the workshop report. The purpose of this meeting was to identify what we know and don't know about pathogenic Vibrios in shellfish and harvest waters, and the applied focus of our project research was useful in many dimensions during the two days of discussion.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Xu F, Gonzalez-Escalona N, Drees KP, Sebra RP, Cooper VS, Jones SH, Whistler CA. Accepted manuscript posted online 7 July 2017. Parallel evolution of two clades of a major Atlantic endemic Vibrio parahaemolyticus pathogen lineage by independent acquisition of related pathogenicity islands. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. doi: 10.1128/AEM.01168-17
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Taylor, M.A. 2017. Microbial Community and Vibrio parahaemolyticus Population Dynamics in Relayed Oysters. Ph.D. Dissertation-Microbiology. University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Hartwick, M., Urquhart, E., Whistler, C., Cooper, V, Jones, S.H. 2017. APPLYING SURVEILLANCE AND SEASONAL TREND ANALYSIS TO IDENTIFY CONDITIONS THAT INFLUENCE V. PARAHAEMOLYTICUS CONCENTRATIONS IN NEW ENGLAND SHELLFISH, p. 46, In, Program and Abstracts. Northeast Aquaculture Conference & Exposition and the 37th Milford Aquaculture Seminar, January 11-13, 2017. Providence, RI.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Schillaci, C., Regan, D., Jones, S.H., Whistler, C. 2017. VIBRIO PARAHAEMOLYTICUS MANAGEMENT FOR OYSTERS IN MASSACHUSETTS, p. 76-77, In, Program and Abstracts. Northeast Aquaculture Conference & Exposition and the 37th Milford Aquaculture Seminar, January 11-13, 2017. Providence, RI.
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