Abstract
Marine biotoxin-contaminated seafood has caused thousands of poisonings worldwide this century. Given these threats, there is an increasing need for improved technologies that can be easily integrated into coastal monitoring programs. This study evaluates approaches for monitoring toxins associated with recurrent toxin-producing Alexandrium and Dinophysis blooms on Long Island, NY, USA, which cause paralytic and diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (PSP and DSP), respectively. Within contrasting locations, the dynamics of pelagic Alexandrium and Dinophysis cell densities, toxins in plankton, and toxins in deployed blue mussels (Mytilus edulis) were compared with passive solid-phase adsorption toxin tracking (SPATT) samplers filled with two types of resin, HP20 and XAD-2. Multiple species of wild shellfish were also collected during Dinophysis blooms and used to compare toxin content using two different extraction techniques (single dispersive and double exhaustive) and two different toxin analysis assays (liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry and the protein phosphatase inhibition assay (PP2A)) for the measurement of DSP toxins. DSP toxins measured in the HP20 resin were significantly correlated (R2 = 0.7–0.9, p < 0.001) with total DSP toxins in shellfish, but were detected more than three weeks prior to detection in deployed mussels. Both resins adsorbed measurable levels of PSP toxins, but neither quantitatively tracked Alexandrium cell densities, toxicity in plankton or toxins in shellfish. DSP extraction and toxin analysis methods did not differ significantly (p > 0.05), were highly correlated (R2 = 0.98–0.99; p < 0.001) and provided complete recovery of DSP toxins from standard reference materials. Blue mussels (Mytilus edulis) and ribbed mussels (Geukensia demissa) were found to accumulate DSP toxins above federal and international standards (160 ng g−1) during Dinophysis blooms while Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) and soft shell clams (Mya arenaria) did not. This study demonstrated that SPATT samplers using HP20 resin coupled with PP2A technology could be used to provide early warning of DSP, but not PSP, events for shellfish management.
Highlights
The range, frequency and intensity of harmful algal blooms (HABs; [1,2,3]) have increased in recent decades
This study demonstrates that solid-phase adsorption toxin tracking (SPATT) samplers containing HP20 resin comprise a promising HAB monitoring technology for the U.S East Coast, which is easy, safe and forgoes the use of live animals hung for monitoring purposes that are time consuming in their weekly maintenance and extraction
While this study found that SPATT samplers were able to detect toxins in the water column 3–4 weeks earlier than shellfish detections and MacKenzie et al [22] reported SPATT diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (DSP) detection at least a week earlier than shellfish, Pizarro et al [28] found that Dinophysis cells provided a more reliable early warning of shellfish toxicity than SPATT
Summary
The range, frequency and intensity of harmful algal blooms (HABs; [1,2,3]) have increased in recent decades. Paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) and diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (DSP) are globally significant human health syndromes that are caused by ingestion of toxins produced by the dinoflagellates Alexandrium (saxitoxin and its congeners) and Dinophysis (okadaic acid and dinophysistoxins), respectively [1,6]. Of these poisonings, it was found that DSP was among the most prevalent (>1200 cases), likely because DSP was discovered in the 1970s and monitoring programs are not well established for this human health syndrome. While PSP has occurred on multiple U.S coastlines for decades [8,9,10,11], it is only within the last decade that DSP has, almost simultaneously, emerged as a threat on the West [12], East [13,14] and Gulf [15,16,17] coasts
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