抄録
Many microorganisms were isolated from sea water samples which were taken from various depths of about 1000 meters on the cruises of the “Oshoro Maru” and “Hokusei Maru” in the North Pacific in 1958 and 1960.
For isolation of microorganisms the medium adopted was ZoBELL 2216-E, and five strains among the many isolates were agar softening bacteria.
The classification of these agar softeners was made according to the Bergey's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology (1957) and method by SHEWAN. In this paper, a taxonomic investigation for these agar softeners was made at the generic and species level. Genera, Pseudomonas, Vibrio or Alginomonas, were the most suitable for these agar softeners from a point of view based on their morphological and physiological characteristics, and these agar softening bacteria did not agree with the species described in Bergey's Manual (1957) and by other workers.
