Fish sampling for disease diagnostics

Credit: Jérôme Delamare-Deboutteville

Quick Fish Sampling Guides for Disease Diagnostics

Fish sampling from aquaculture farms, hatcheries or the wild requires specific techniques and skills to collect quality biological samples to screen for pathogens and make accurate disease diagnosis. WorldFish and partners, including SAF scientists, have developed a series of quick fish sampling guides for research activities, routine disease screening and outbreak investigation.

Infectious diseases represent a major challenge and limitation to sustainable aquaculture.

They can have major impacts on animal welfare, the livelihood of farmers, and threaten the health of captive stocks and wild populations. Pathogens can spread through movement of live fish, fish products, water and shared equipment. Routine screenings of pathogens in aquatic animal production systems are important to minimize the risk of their introduction, transmission and spread.

On suspicion of a disease during abnormal mortalities, investigation with collection of biological samples from moribund animals must take place rapidly for disease diagnostics. Quality biological sampling is a fundamental requirement for all kinds of disease diagnostic and pathogen screening work. WorldFish and partners developed these rapid sampling guides to support good quality diagnostic and screening protocols.

"It is important to develop practical and easy to use training materials to prepare anyone involved with biological sample collection. WorldFish and partners created a series of quick fish sampling guides for disease diagnostics that can be used to build capacity of students, young researchers, small scale farmers and field officers working in health management of aquatic food systems. These guides can either be printed and laminated on cards for use in the field or directly accessed on mobile devices." Jerome Delamare-Deboutteville, Scientist at WorldFish

The guides provide end users with quick visual step-by-step instructions and requirements to collect biological samples for different diagnostic techniques, including wet mount preparation, microbiome, blood, bacteriology, molecular biology, virology and histology sampling.

Click on the links below to see each sampling guide in more detail.

• Sampling materials for fish disease diagnostics. Download guide here
• Wet-mount sampling guide (for ectoparasites & fungi). Download guide here
• Microbiome sampling guide. Download guide here
• Blood sampling guide. Download guide here
• Bacteriology sampling guide. Download guide here
• Molecular diagnostics sampling guide. Download guide here
• Histology sampling guide. Download guide here

Further information on the project and sampling guides can be found here.

Date: 21 September 2021