Mass mortality among the post-larvae of cultured abalone Haliotis diversicolor supertexta has occurred on the south coast of China since 2002. The diseased abalone are generally 10 to 30 days old, and typical signs of the disease include them turning white in colour and falling off the diatom films on which they were cultured. Among sixteen different motile bacteria isolated from the diseased post-larvae, four were identified as Vibrio parahaemolyticus on the basis of biochemical characteristics when compared with those of a V. parahaemolyticus type strain ATCC 17802T. Isolate 25, a representative isolate of V. parahaemolyticus recovered from diseased abalone, was virulent for the post-larvae with an LD50 value of 3.5 × 105 CFU (colony forming units)/ml. All moribund post-larvae artificially infected with the bacterium turned white and fell off the diatom films on which they were cultured as seen to occur during natural outbreaks of the disease, and it was possible to recover the bacterium from artificially infected post-larvae. The results of the study indicate that V. parahaemolyticus is a pathogenic bacterium to abalone post-larvae.