Coastal water bacteriophages infect various sets of Vibrio parahaemolyticus sequence types.

Overall, the 29 bacterial isolates segregated into one of eight patterns of susceptibility, ranging from resistance to all four phages to susceptibility to any number of phages. STs represented by more than one bacterial isolate segregated within the same pattern of susceptibility except for one ST. Other patterns of susceptibility included exclusively clinical isolates represented by distinct STs. Overall, this study suggests that phages populating coastal waters could be exploited to monitor for the presence of STs known to cause foodborne outbreaks.