Preliminary experiments investigating the media required to induce chitinase production in liquid culture found chitinase activity to be present only within inoculated flasks that contained Tris-buffered sea salts and 1% chitin powder (data not shown). Inoculated flasks, run in parallel, that contained either Tris-buffered sea salts, 1% chitin powder plus 0 – 01% tryptone or Tris-buffered sea salts alone, did not induce chitinase production (data not shown). The crude chitinase found in supernatant samples was stable at fi 20 ° C without a significant loss in activity for at least 6 months (data not shown).