Abstract
Globally, the livelihoods of over a billion people are affected by changes to marine ecosystems, both structurally and systematically. Resources and ecosystem services, provided by the marine environment, contribute nutrition, income, and health benefits for communities. One threat to these securities is ciguatera poisoning; worldwide, the most commonly reported non-bacterial seafood-related illness. Ciguatera is caused by the consumption of (primarily) finfish contaminated with ciguatoxins, potent neurotoxins produced by benthic single-cell microalgae. When consumed, ciguatoxins are biotransformed and can bioaccumulate throughout the food-web via complex pathways. Ciguatera-derived food insecurity is particularly extreme for small island-nations, where fear of intoxication can lead to fishing restrictions by region, species, or size. Exacerbating these complexities are anthropogenic or natural changes occurring in global marine habitats, e.g., climate change, greenhouse-gas induced physical oceanic changes, overfishing, invasive species, and even the international seafood trade. Here we provide an overview of the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century regarding the many facets of ciguatera, including the complex nature of this illness, the biological/environmental factors affecting the causative organisms, their toxins, vectors, detection methods, human-health oriented responses, and ultimately an outlook towards the future. Ciguatera research efforts face many social and environmental challenges this century. However, several future-oriented goals are within reach, including digital solutions for seafood supply chains, identifying novel compounds and methods with the potential for advanced diagnostics, treatments, and prediction capabilities. The advances described herein provide confidence that the tools are now available to answer many of the remaining questions surrounding ciguatera and therefore protection measures can become more accurate and routine.
Highlights
The identified risks, impacts, and challenges faced in the 21st century are numerous, encompassing economic, geopolitical, societal, technological, and environmental pressures [1]
There were three families of CTXs described, whose chemical structure was labeled loosely based on their geographic origin, namely Caribbean Sea (C-CTXs), Pacific Ocean (P-CTXs), and Indian Ocean (I-CTXs)
These region-specific descriptions are still in use, the FAO and WHO ‘Report of the expert meeting on ciguatera poisoning’ recommends a description based upon known chemical structures and geographical distribution
Summary
The identified risks, impacts, and challenges faced in the 21st century are numerous, encompassing economic, geopolitical, societal, technological, and environmental pressures [1]. Small island developing states and their artisanal fisheries are vulnerable to these seafood insecurities and are dependent upon a secure local seafood supply [6,7] Otherwise, they risk becoming increasingly dependent on imported foods and foreign assistance programs [6,8,9]. CP occurrences by region can be found in Figure 2A [43] along with satellite-derived monthly average sea surface temperature ≥15 ◦ C for the global peak summer (Figure 2B) and winter (Figure 2C) seasons of 2020 This set of images shows CP endemic areas and the territories with emerging incidences since the beginning of this century (Figure 2A), and where the most recent extent of thermal tolerance (Figure 2B,C) is likely to already be suitable for seasonal habitability for the species involved in CP.
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