It is obvious that a documented history for marine microbial food cultures is rare, though plenty of fermented marine food and condiments are consumed all over the world, particularly in East Asian countries.
Traditional fermentation process of fish, oysters and algae mainly relies on original microorganisms coming from the marine environment rather than adding starter cultures (Lee, 1993).
With recent advances in marine microbiology and noticing the importance of having scientific evidences on microbial diversity of marine fermented food, many attempts have been made to reveal the microbial communities associated with traditional fermented marine foods.
It has been observed that a number of lactic acid bacterial species, including Bacillus, Micrococcus, Pediococcus, and Pseudomonas, of marine origin are dominant in those foods.
Table 2 gives an overview of traditional marine fermented foods and their dominant microbial strains. All these background information point out that the commitment of food microbiologists and relevant authorities to assess the safety aspects of marine-derived microbial species for modern food products is important.
This initiation would be highly appreciated as application of many valuable marine microbial ingredients in food related products has been terminated due to inadequate safety data.
From this point forward, the focus of this review has been on the marine microbial metabolites that have shown potentials to be developed as bioactive food ingredients.