Beware of Vibrio bacteria in warm water: Gulf and Atlantic Coast areas

[Astronuc]

On Oct. 13, 2017, Bailey died in the hospital, the victim of a microbe so dangerous it can inflict horrific pain, trigger ghastly skin infections and kill in a matter of days.

Bailey's death came days after he handled crabs, one which pinched his finger causing a cut. Some vibrio bacteria entered the fresh wound into the blood stream.

Since 2007, reports of illness from toxic forms of vibrio have tripled in South Carolina and nearly doubled in North Carolina, statistics show.

Read more here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article246018110.html

Annual infections from dangerous forms of vibrio have steadily risen in North Carolina, increasing from 21 to 41 cases since 2007, according to the most recent state health data. In South Carolina, the number of infections each year has jumped from 8 to 29 cases since 2007.

One doctor indicated the CDC estimated 2005, maybe about 8000 cases of vibrio infection each year across the US. Now annual estimates are about 80,000, a tenfold increase in 15 years.

https://www.cdc.gov/vibrio/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrio

unlike other types of harmful bacteria in coastal waters, vibrio isn’t considered common enough by state agencies to issue many specific warnings about the microbe. North Carolina’s beach water testing program, which includes monitoring water quality on 88 sounds and estuaries with beaches —where vibrio is more likely to occur — does not check for vibrio or post signs warning of the naturally occurring bacteria, program managers said.

In some cases, tourism communities don’t want signs warning people to stay out of the water because it’s bad for business. And elected officials sometimes question the reality of climate change.

 

[BigDon]

Are there any decent members in that entire genus or are they all pathogens?

(If I'm not mistaken, nobody's favorite plug puller, cholera, is also a vibrio.)

 

[BillTre]

Cholera is a Vibrio.
There are variants of cholera that are less or non-toxic.
In Cholera, selection for non-toxicity is favored in conditions of better cleanliness because non-toxicity favors transmission in those conditions.

There are also numerous kinds of Vibrio infections fish can get, but some aquatic Vibrios are not pathogenic to fish.
Several years ago, a researcher looking at fish microbiome did a series of studies to determine what kinds of microbes were present in or on the zebrafish we had in our facility. They counted something like 16,000 to 18,000 species as I recall.
One was a Vibrio that looked a lot like Cholera. It caused a lot of excitement for a while (since we had something like 80-100 people contacting fish and fish water).
Further study determined it lacked the Cholera toxicity factor and so was not pathogenic.