A study was conducted to evaluate the microbial quality of seafoods collected from Dammam fish market, Saudi Arabia. In this study, Fishes, Prawns and Cuttlefishes (10 samples each) were analysed in 6 sample categories such as Fish skin, Fish gills, Fish muscles, Prawn, Cuttlefish skin and Cuttlefish muscles. Bacterial isolates were characterized on specific culture mediaand further confirmed using API 20E, API 20NE, API ID32 Staph strips and identified by "api web". Total Plate Count of bacteria and Total Coliforms Count were conducted only for muscles samples and the occurrence of specific pathogenic bacteria was determined for all samples. In such investigation, the TPC values of Prawns exceed the marginal level of acceptability and the Total Coliform Counts were exceeding the limits in all the samples analysed. And species of different bacterial isolates were identified such as, Aeromonas spp, Staphylococci spp, Vibrio spp, Enterobacteriaceae, Shewanella putrifaciens, Pasteurella aerogenes, Aerococcus viridans, Ralstonia pickettii, Acinetobacter baumannii and Psuedomonas luteola. The results of this study indicate the urgent need required to improve the Quality Control and Quality Assurance systems of Dammam Fish Market.

Seafoods are liable to bacterial contamination and could cause health risk to consumers. The present work is aimed to study the occurrence of potentially pathogenic and related species in seafoods obtained from the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Studies were carried out to isolate, identify and characterized different bacterial species in 448 seafood samples comprising Fishes (353), Prawns (49) and Cuttlefishes (46), collected during the period from January 2015 until May 2016. TCBS agar was used for isolation and presumptive colonies both suspicious and non-suspicious for Vibrios were subcultured, characterized by biochemical tests and then identified at the genus and species level using API 20NE test kits. Species belongs to 8 bacterial families were isolated and the most predominant was Vibrionaceae 262 (58.4 %), followed by Aeromonadaceae 45 (10.4 %), Shewanellaceae 16 (3.57 %), Pasteurellaceae 13 (2.90 %), Caulobacteriaceae 9 (2.00 %), Pseudomonadaceae 7 (1.56 %), Enterobacteriaceae 7 (1.56 %) and Burkholderiaceae 6 (1.33 %). The presence of these organisms in the fresh seafood samples showed that the source of contamination may be from environment, catching, unhygienic handling and transportation. Thus it is strongly recommended that fresh seafoods must be properly stored at low temperature, good hygienic practices must be strictly followed and the seafoods must be adequately subjected to proper cooking before consumption.