Seafood may be dangerous if not informed and aware of the benefits and disadvantages connected to eating it. While some scientists spend their time in searching for its occurrence, many people are still becoming victims of this delicious but harmful delicacy. At the University of New Hampshire, researchers have discovered a new strain of bacteria called Vibrio parahaemolyticus to have infected oysters along the Atlantic Coast. Victims who have ingested the contaminated shellfish may exhibit signs of poisoning such as diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain, in rare and untreated cases, lethal septicemia can cause death.

In a recent report from Fox News, a new, more virulent strain has been discovered by Cheryl Whistler and her coworkers which were named as ST631. Their findings were then published in the "Journal of Clinical Microbiology", indicating that these strains are more dangerous and have embodied almost the same virulence as that of ST36. Furthermore, the new strain has similar genes with ST36 and is believed to have originated from the Pacific Northwest.

Whistler already revealed that the new strain is already endemic to the region although her team cannot distinguish how it became as hazardous as per reports from Counsel & Heal. Beforehand, Cheryl Whistler has known only one strain which is now causing problems in New England. This has been causing 45,000 cases of food poisoning in the U.S each year.

Whistler who is the director of University of New Hampshire's Northeast Center for Vibrio Disease and Ecology is already in doubt if each of these three strains is the only culprit or there are already hundreds of them. Along with the federal Food and Drug Administration and public health and with shellfish management agencies in five states, Cheryl Whistler was able to discover the new strain of ST631. Pointing out that these strains can increase on different water temperatures due to the effects of climate change.

Thus certain measures are needed to prevent further evolution of these bacterial strains as climate change has been tagged along to this issue. With this new discovery, Public officials and the society are urged to be engaged towards preventive measures and environmental protection.