Three-hundred and sixteen Escherichia coli strains from seawater, and a variety of farmed fishes, including oliver flounder (Paralichthys olivaceus), black rock fish (Sebastes schlegeli), red sea bream (Pagrus major) and sea bass (Lateolabrax japonicus) between May to October in 2004, were tested by agar dilution method to determine their susceptibility patterns to 17 antimicrobial agents. Overall, 92.1% of Escherichia coli isolates from samples showed antimicrobial resistance to at least one antimicrobial agent and the multiple resistance was seen in 173 isolates (54.7%). The resistance of E. coli isolates to tetracycline (74.1%) was highest, followed by cephalothin (69.9%), doxycycline (66.5%), streptomycin (47.2%), ampicillin (46.2%), cefazolin (31.6%), enrofloxacin (31.0%). norfloxacin (28.2%). The most frequent resistance pattern was TE-D-CF-CIP-ENO-NOR-AM-S-C-SXT-AmC-CZ (14.7%), followed by CF (6.2%), TE (5.1%), TE-CF (4.5%) in 177 isolates from fishes and TE-D-CF (7.2%) followed by TE-D-CF-S (5.8%), CF and TE-D-S (3.6%) in 139 isolates from seawater.