ABSTRACT
Harmful algal blooms (HABs), commonly known as “red tide”, have increased in frequency of occurrence and expanded their spatial distribution worldwide in the coastal waters in the recent decades (Hallegraeff 1993, Anderson 1997). HABs have multiple impacts on marine ecosystems as well as human health, posing major concerns about toxins produced by certain species of algae or phytoplankton. These algal toxins can be accumulated in shellfi sh, such as mussels and clams when they fi lter water during their natural feeding process. Once contaminated shellfi sh is consumed by humans, and may cause some health problems (Anderson et al. 2001). According to the symptoms observed in human intoxications, these algal toxins had been originally classifi ed as: Paralytic shellfi sh poisoning (PSP),
1School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, 200240. Email: wangjinhui@189.cn 2College of Marine Sciences, Shanghai Ocean University, China, 201306. Email: hhuang@shou.edu.cn 3Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA. Email: w_jianyong@hotmail.com *Corresponding author
Diarrhetic shellfi sh poisoning (DSP), Amnesic shellfi sh poisoning (ASP), Neurotoxic shellfi sh poisoning (NSP), Ciguatera fi sh poisoning (CFP), Azaspiracid shellfi sh poisoning (AZP) and possible estuary-associated syndrome (Daranas et al. 2001, Shoemaker and Hudnell 2001). In recent years, these biotoxins have been classifi ed into eight groups according to their chemical structures, namely, azaspiracid (AZA) group, brevetoxin group, cyclic imines group, domoic acid (DA) group, okadaic acid (OA) group, pectenotoxin (PTX) group, saxitoxin (STX) group and yessotoxin (YTX) group (Toyofuku 2006).
