Oyster bed

There’s no need to worry – oyster herpes is not transferable to humans by eating “the food of love”.

This incurable, not to mention deadly, virus is a grave concern to the fishing communities in Europe. Oyster herpes is on the rise in Europe, and could go on spreading itself out even further, should the seas continue to get warmer, experts warn.

This past July farmed oysters were tested and the first known United Kingdom cases of herpes was detected in shellfish. This virus has already made its mark, killing somewhere between 20 and 100 percent of the breeding pacific oysters in some French beds from 2008 until 2010, according to, Ifemer, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea.

The reason that oyster herpes has been emerging more in Pacific oysters off of England still has scientists stumped, however many are speculating that Global Warming has something to do with it.

A new strain of Oyster herpes (Ostreid herpesvirus), remains dormant until the temperature of the water exceeds 16 degrees Celsius. UK waters reach this temperature in the height of summer, according to a member of the British government’s Fish Health Inspectorate, Kevin Denham.

Keeping that fact in mind, the director of Ifemer’s genetic and pathology lab, Tristan Renault, has commented that global warming “could be an explanation of the appearance of this particular type of virus.”

Though all of the herpes strains are DNA-based viruses, herpes, which infects everything from elephants to chickens to monkeys, comes in an astonishing number of species, each with their own distinct set of symptoms.

In humans, the best known forms of herpes are the Herpes simplex viruses, which spread through close contact and can produce symptoms such as oral and genital blisters.

Ostreid herpes viruses have been shown to affect not only oysters, but also scallops, clams and other scallops, explains Renault.

New Oyster Herpes

Shellfish who are infected with herpes are not new to the scientific world, however, in 2008 – the first year where there was a marked increase in the mortality rates detected in France – Ifremer stumbled upon a new strain of the virus.

Much like the other strains of the oyster herpes virus which infect mollusks, this new strain singles out younger oysters during the breeding season when the bodies of the mollusks’ are focusing all their energy on producing sperm and eggs, leaving them without enough energy to maintain their immune system Renault explains.

However, this new strain of oyster herpes is “more virulent than strains we have identified before,” Renault continued, adding that the virus is extremely efficient when it comes to killing its hosts, and can eradicate 80 percent of the oysters in a bed inside a week.

The most starting thing about this new strain of oyster herpes, is that the only visible sign there is something amiss, is the mortality rate, because oyster herpes does not have any visible symptoms, and can only be diagnosed through a lab test.