New capabilities of Sentinel-2A/B satellites combined with in situ data for monitoring small harmful algal blooms in complex coastal waters.

The increased frequency of harmful algal blooms (HABs) is a major environmental concern worldwide, resulting not only in increased treatment costs for drinking water but also in impacts on tourism, commercial fishing and aquaculture and risks to human and animal health. Traditional strategies with ship-based approaches based on field sampling and laboratory analysis have been adopted to assess HABs. However, these methods are labour intensive and costly and do not provide synoptic views of the bloom conditions.

Species and Diarrhetic Shellfish Toxins: 20 Years of Monitoring Program in Andalusia, South of Spain.

In Andalusia, the official monitoring program for toxic phytoplankton and marine biotoxins was launched in 1994 to comply with European legislation. Since then, there have been numerous episodes of DST (Diarrhetic shellfish toxins) associated with the proliferation of species. This article reviews two decades of time series data and assesses the effectiveness of the program established.

Production of functionally active palytoxin-like compounds by Mediterranean Ostreopsis cf. siamensis.

Background And Purpose: Dinoflagellates from the genus Ostreopsis have been related to the production of palytoxin and analogues. Based on that, this paper describes functional studies of crude extracts from Ostreopsis cf. siamensis collected in the Mediterranean Sea in order to biochemically characterize their toxic compounds.

Specific and dynamic detection of palytoxins by in vitro microplate assay with human neuroblastoma cells.

Palytoxin is one of the most complex and biggest molecules known to show extreme acute toxicity. The dinoflagellate Ostreopsis spp., the producer organism of palytoxin, has been shown to be distributed worldwide, thus making palytoxin an emerging toxin.