Herpesviruses are a significant threat during the hatchery and nursery phases of catfish aquaculture. Blue catfish alloherpesvirus (BCAHV) is a novel strain of ictalurid herpesvirus-1 isolated from blue catfish fingerlings. The genome of BCAHV and CCV shares significant similarities. A detailed study on the pathogenesis of BCAHV revealed that it causes substantial mortalities in blue catfish (82%) and hybrid catfish (26%) fingerlings which can drastically affect the viability of farm operations. Thomas Rivers (1937) modified Koch’s postulates to include viruses as infectious agents causing diseases . According to Rivers’s postulates, the causative relationship between a virus and disease are stated as isolation of virus from the diseased host, cultivation of virus in host cells, proof of filterability, production of comparable disease when the cultivated virus infects naive animals, reisolation of the same virus from the infected animals, and detection of specific immune response to the virus. Validation of theses six postulates are crucial to verify the causation of a disease as a virus. Fulfilment of Rivers ’s postulates is also essential to formulate pathogen-targeted treatment and management strategies including vaccination. Rivers’s postulates were tested and verified for BCAHV infection to confirm the causality of infection in blue catfish (Figure 1) . Specific immune responses against BCAHV were observed when the survivors from initial virus exposu re were challenged with wild type virus. Hence, BCAHV fulfilled all the criteria to be the primary etiological agent of infection in blue catfish.