TABLE 6.

Pearson correlation coefficients comparing the physicochemical parameters of the harvest water with abundance of vibrios carrying virulence markers in water and oysters

Physicochemical parameter	Comparisona	Correlation coefficients (r value and significance level)b
		Water	Oysters
Temp	tdh vs temp	−0.02, 0.84	0.06, 0.54
Salinity	tdh vs salinity	0.45, <0.0001	0.69, <0.0001
Dissolved oxygen	tdh vs dissolved oxygen	−0.35, 0.0003	−0.61, <0.0001
Turbidity	tdh vs turbidity	0.23, 0.0173	0.42, <0.0001
Chlorophyll a	tdh vs chlorophyll a	−0.17, 0.0934	−0.29, 0.0032
pH	tdh vs pH	0.02, 0.8474	−0.02, 0.8797
Temp	trh vs temp	0.01, 0.9163	0.04, 0.7024
Salinity	trh vs salinity	0.42, <0.0001	0.69, <0.0001
Dissolved oxygen	trh vs dissolved oxygen	−0.48, <0.0001	−0.60, <0.0001
Turbidity	trh vs turbidity	0.32, 0.0008	0.47, <0.0001
Chlorophyll a	trh vs chlorophyll a	−0.21, 0.0317	−0.30, 0.0019
pH	trh vs pH	−0.18, 0.0637	−0.10, 0.3017
Temp	vcgC vs temp	0.14, 0.1461	0.37, <0.0001
Salinity	vcgC vs salinity	0.39, <0.0001	0.15, 0.1360
Dissolved oxygen	vcgC vs dissolved oxygen	−0.40, <0.0001	−0.15, 0.1158
Turbidity	vcgC vs turbidity	0.45, <0.0001	0.07, 0.4834
Chlorophyll a	vcgC vs chlorophyll a	−0.08, 0.4128	0.11, 0.2554
pH	vcgC vs pH	−0.20, 0.0438	0.003, 0.9740

^atlh, thermolabile hemolysin gene of V. parahaemolyticus (indicator of total V. parahaemolyticus); tdh, thermostable direct hemolysin gene of pathogenic strains of V. parahaemolyticus; trh, tdh-related hemolysin of pathogenic strains of V. parahaemolyticus; vvhA, cytolytic hemolysin gene of V. vulnificus (indicator of total V. vulnificus); vcgC, virulence-correlated gene of V. vulnificus (indicator of pathogenic V. vulnificus).

^bCorrelations reflect surface water comparisons for water and bottom water comparisons for oysters, with the exception of those with chlorophyll a, which are surface waters for both. Numbers in bold are r values of >0.40.