ABSTRACT
Ciguatera fi sh poisoning (CFP) has affected coastal populations in tropical and subtropical areas for centuries. This term was fi rst coined in the Caribbean by the Spanish in the 17th century and derives from “cigua”, the name used by indigenous populations in the Spanish Antilles for a marine snail (Halstead 1967, Banner 1976). In the Pacifi c, ships’ records from the early 1600s in the New Hebrides, and Captain James Cook in 1774 from New Caledonia indicated that ships’ crew displayed clinical symptoms that today are associated with CFP (Helfrich 1964). In more recent history, outbreaks of fi sh poisoning occurred throughout the Pacifi c before, during and after
IRTA, Ctra. de Poble Nou, Km 5,5, E-43540 Sant Carles de la Ràpita (Tarragona), Spain. aEmail: lucia.solino@irta.cat bEmail: pablo.delaiglesia@irta.cat cEmail: maria.garciaaltares@irta.cat dEmail: jorge.diogene@irta.es *Corresponding author
World War II, and became a problem for military troops in islands where CFP was endemic (Hokama and Yoshikawa-Ebesu 2001). CFP was known to affect reef fi shes, usually big carnivorous ones. It was also known that CFP did not affect wide areas but was localized in relatively small areas and also during a certain period of time. This knowledge has passed from generation to generation by oral tradition and has been used to avoid the consumption of contaminated fi sh. Despite it all, a part of the population is recurrently affected by the disease in persistent CFP areas. At the middle of the 20th century, the unexplained phenomenon of CFP pushed researches from different disciplines all around the word to join efforts with the goal of discovering the origin, prevention and cure of CFP (Ad hoc advisory group meeting on fi sh poisoning 1977).
