Patent ID: 6908746

Claim:
A method of detecting and/or enumerating sulfide-producing bacteria in a fish sample, comprising: preparing the fish sample as a liquified fish sample; forming an incubation mixture by combining the liquified fish sample with a growth medium comprising iron and sulfur, and wherein an iron precipitate is formed in the incubation mixture when sulfide-producing bacteria act upon the iron and sulfur in the growth medium; incubating the incubation mixture at an incubation temperature; taking a plurality of fluorescence measurements from the incubation mixture during the incubation period to detect a fluorescence peak, the fluorescence peak comprising a fluorescence increase followed by a fluorescence decrease, the fluorescence decrease coinciding with an accumulation of the iron precipitate in the incubation mixture, wherein the period of time to the fluorescence peak comprises a detection time; and estimating the number of sulfide-producing bacteria in the fish sample by comparing the detection time to a correlation schedule.