Marine Harmful Algal Blooms (Habs) in the United States: History, Current Status and Future Trends
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W&M ScholarWorks VIMS Articles Virginia Institute of Marine Science 2021 Marine harmful algal blooms (HABs) in the United States: History, current status and future trends Donald M. Anderson Elizabeth Fensin Christopher J. Gobler (...) Juliette L. Smith Virginia Institute of Marine Science See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/vimsarticles Part of the Marine Biology Commons Recommended Citation Anderson, Donald M.; Fensin, Elizabeth; Gobler, Christopher J.; (...); Smith, Juliette L.; and et al, Marine harmful algal blooms (HABs) in the United States: History, current status and future trends (2021). Harmful Algae, 102, 101975. doi: 10.1016/j.hal.2021.101975 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in VIMS Articles by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Authors Donald M. Anderson, Elizabeth Fensin, Christopher J. Gobler, (...), Juliette L. Smith, and et al This article is available at W&M ScholarWorks: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/vimsarticles/2093 Harmful Algae 102 (2021) 101975 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Harmful Algae journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/hal Original Article Marine harmful algal blooms (HABs) in the United States: History, current status and future trends Donald M. Anderson a,*, Elizabeth Fensin b, Christopher J. Gobler c, Alicia E. Hoeglund d, Katherine A. Hubbard d, David M. Kulis a, Jan H. Landsberg d, Kathi A. Lefebvre e, Pieter Provoost f, Mindy L. Richlen a, Juliette L. Smith g, Andrew R. Solow a, Vera L. Trainer e a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, 02543, United States b NC Division of Water Resources, 4401 Reedy Creek Road, Raleigh, NC, 27607, United States c School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, Southampton, NY, 11968, United States d Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, St. Petersburg, Florida, 33701, United States e Environmental and Fisheries Sciences Division, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, Seattle, WA, 98112, United States f Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, IOC Project Office for IODE, 8400 Oostende, Belgium g Department of Aquatic Health Sciences, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, William & Mary, Gloucester Point, VA 23062, United States ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are diverse phenomena involving multiple. species and classes of algae that occupy HAB a broad range of habitats from lakes to oceans and produce a multiplicity of toxins or bioactive compounds that Harmful algal bloom impact many different resources. Here, a review of the status of this complex array of marine HAB problems in Red tide the U.S. is presented, providing historical information and trends as well as future perspectives. The study relies Eutrophication on thirty years (1990–2019) of data in HAEDAT - the IOC-ICES-PICES Harmful Algal Event database, but also Time series HAEDAT includes many other reports. At a qualitative level, the U.S. national HAB problem is far more extensive than was the case decades ago, with more toxic species and toxins to monitor, as well as a larger range of impacted re sources and areas affected. Quantitatively, no significant trend is seen for paralytic shellfish toxin (PST) events over the study interval, though there is clear evidence of the expansion of the problem into new regions and the emergence of a species that produces PSTs in Florida – Pyrodinium bahamense. Amnesic shellfish toxin (AST) events have significantly increased in the U.S., with an overall pattern of frequent outbreaks on the West Coast, emerging, recurring outbreaks on the East Coast, and sporadic incidents in the Gulf of Mexico. Despite the long historical record of neurotoxic shellfish toxin (NST) events, no significant trend is observed over the past 30 years. The recent emergence of diarrhetic shellfish toxins (DSTs) in the U.S. began along the Gulf Coast in 2008 and expanded to the West and East Coasts, though no significant trend through time is seen since then. Cigua toxin (CTX) events caused by Gambierdiscus dinoflagellateshave long impacted tropical and subtropical locations in the U.S., but due to a lack of monitoring programs as well as under-reporting of illnesses, data on these events are not available for time series analysis. Geographic expansion of Gambierdiscus into temperate and non- endemic areas (e.g., northern Gulf of Mexico) is apparent, and fostered by ocean warming. HAB-related ma rine wildlife morbidity and mortality events appear to be increasing, with statistically significant increasing trends observed in marine mammal poisonings caused by ASTs along the coast of California and NSTs in Florida. Since their firstoccurrence in 1985 in New York, brown tides resulting from high-density blooms of Aureococcus have spread south to Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, while those caused by Aureoumbra have spread from the Gulf Coast to the east coast of Florida. Blooms of Margalefidiniumpolykrikoides occurred in four locations in the U. S. from 1921–2001 but have appeared in more than 15 U.S. estuaries since then, with ocean warming implicated as a causative factor. Numerous blooms of toxic cyanobacteria have been documented in all 50 U.S. states and the transport of cyanotoxins from freshwater systems into marine coastal waters is a recently identified and potentially significant threat to public and ecosystem health. Taken together, there is a significant increasing trend in all HAB events in HAEDAT over the 30-year study interval. Part of this observed HAB expansion simply reflects a better realization of the true or historic scale of * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (D.M. Anderson). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hal.2021.101975 Received 10 November 2020; Received in revised form 7 January 2021; Accepted 13 January 2021 Available online 3 March 2021 1568-9883/© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). D.M. Anderson et al. Harmful Algae 102 (2021) 101975 the problem, long obscured by inadequate monitoring. Other contributing factors include the dispersion of species to new areas, the discovery of new HAB poisoning syndromes or impacts, and the stimulatory effects of human activities like nutrient pollution, aquaculture expansion, and ocean warming, among others. One result of this multifaceted expansion is that many regions of the U.S. now face a daunting diversity of species and toxins, representing a significant and growing challenge to resource managers and public health officials in terms of toxins, regions, and time intervals to monitor, and necessitating new approaches to monitoring and management. Mobilization of funding and resources for research, monitoring and management of HABs requires accurate information on the scale and nature of the national problem. HAEDAT and other databases can be of great value in this regard but efforts are needed to expand and sustain the collection of data regionally and nationally. 1. Introduction is that the datasets available at the local, state, and national levels are highly variable in terms of years of coverage, parameters measured, and Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are a significant problem in U.S. the nature of bloom events that are recorded. Although these records are coastal waters, dating back hundreds of years to when explorers and valuable and are used to some extent herein, this study relies predom- early west-coast settlers were poisoned from what we now know were inantly on HAEDAT - the IOC-ICES-PICES1 Harmful Algal Event data- toxins in the seafood they consumed (e.g., Fortuine 1975). The species base (http://haedat.iode.org/). HAEDAT was originally established by that cause HABs in the U.S. are diverse, as are the habitats in which they the ICES-IOC Working Group on Harmful Algal Bloom Dynamics in the occur. Impacts are equally diverse and include multiple human 1990s to compile bloom data from ICES countries bordering the North poisoning syndromes associated with the consumption of molluscan and Atlantic. In 2000, PICES began adding bloom records from the Pacific crustacean shellfish, fish, and other marine animals that have accumu- region (though U.S. West Coast HAB events have been recorded in lated algal toxins. Human exposures to aerosolized or water-borne HAEDAT since 1989). The database now contains 880 bloom events toxins, and dermatological contact with HABs can also have negative from the U.S. impacts. Other effects include mortalities of fishand wildlife, ecosystem All reports entered into HAEDAT must meet a strict definition of a disruption, hypoxia and anoxia from high biomass blooms, and noxious ‘harmful algal event’. Specifically,the bloom must be associated with a impacts associated with the accumulation and decay of massive micro- negative impact or management action. These could include: 1) toxin and macroalgal blooms. accumulation in seafood above levels considered safe for human con- HABs affect economic and health sectors that include commercial sumption; 2) water discoloration, scum or foam sufficient to cause and recreational fisheries, aquaculture, coastal tourism, as well as ecosystem damage or a socioeconomic impact; 3) any event where wildlife and human health. Potentially impacted resources include humans, animals or other organisms are negatively affected by the commercially harvested fishand shellfishwith a value of $5.6 billion in bloom; or 4) precautionary closures of harvesting areas based on pre- 2018, and aquaculture production valued at $1.5 billion in 2017 (NMFS definedthresholds of toxic phytoplankton cells in the water. Note that a 2018). Of all species of fish and shellfish harvested, shellfish are most single HAEDAT event can represent dozens of individual toxin mea- severely impacted by HABs due to the retention of toxins in their tissues.