A total 103 strains of Edwardsiella tarda was isolated from eel culture-ponds and examined for drug resistance, distribution and transferabilities of R plasmids. The drugs used were lincomycin(LM), penicillin(PM), sulfamethazine(SF), sulfadimethoxine(SD), cephalosprin(CP), chloramphenicol(CH), streptomycin(SM), oxytetracycline(OT), ampicillin(AP), oxolinic acid(OA), kanamycin(KM), amikacin(AK), gentamicin(GM) and enrofloxacin(EF). Two strains were resistant to the all drugs used, and all isolates were multiply resistant to drugs(at least 8 among 14 drugs), mostly restricted to LM(103 strains), PM(103 strains), SD(103 strains), SF(103 strains), CP(102 strains), CM(101 strains), SM(100 strains), OT(94 strains), AM(92 strains), OA(80 strains), KM(60 strains), AK(30 strains), GM(19 strains) and EF(14 strains), in combination at high degree showing 34 different drug resistant patterns. The most frequently encountered patterns were LM PM SD SF CP CH SM OT AP OA KM(22 strains, 22.4%) followed by LM PM SD SF CP CH SM OT AP OT(12 strains, 11.7%). LM PM SD SF CP CH SM OT AP(7 strains, 6.8%), LM PM SD SF CP CH SM OT AP OA KM AK GM(6 strains, 5.8%) and LM PM SD SF CP CH SM OT AM OX KM AK GM(6 strains, 5.8%). Transfer experiment of drug resistance showed that of 103 resistant strains, 100 strains(97%) transferred part or all resistance to all drugs, indicating that most isolates carried conjugally transferrable R plasmids determining multiple drugs. The most frequently observed transferarble R plasmids were LM PM SD SF CP CH SM OT AP OA(10 strains), LM PM SD SF CP CH SM OT AP OX KM(7 strains) and LM PM SD SF CP CH AP OA(7 strains). These results sugested that eel culture-ponds were highly contaminated with different strains of Edwardsiella tarda, and that contaminated bacteria might be highly multiple resistant strains to drugs, carring transferable R plasmids.