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      Vol. 8(16), pp. 1722-1729, 16 April, 2014 DOI: 10.5897/AJMR2014.6659 Article Number: 90E401B44055 ISSN 1996-0808 African Journal of Microbiology Research Copyright © 2014 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article /AJMR Full Length Research Paper Massive mortality associated with Streptococcus iniae infection in cage-cultured red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) in Eastern China Francis Pius Mmanda, Suming Zhou, Jiting Zhang, Xiaoye Zheng, Shuwei An and Guoliang Wang* Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education for Applied Marine Biotechnology, School of Marine Science, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China. Received 24 January, 2014; Accepted 24 March, 2014 In August, 2011, an enzootic disease characterized by hemorrhage throughout body surface, enlarged spleen and kidney occurred in cage farmed red drum fish, in Dongtou, Zhejiang of China. The diseased fish weighed between 100 to 200 g, and the cumulative mortality within 60 days was higher than 70%. Several bacterial isolates that exhibited the same phenotypic traits and biochemical characteristics were isolated from the lesions of diseased fish. According to the results obtained from biochemical tests and sequence analysis of the 16S rDNA, the disease’s pathogen (strain WZMH110819) was identified as Streptococcus iniae. In the challenge trials, the LD50 value of the clinical