Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning - PSP in Wild Marine Mammals

PSP in Wild Marine Mammals

PSP has been implicated as a possible cause of sea otter mortality and morbidity in Alaska, as one of its primary prey items, the butter clam (Saxidonus giganteus) bioaccumulates saxitoxin as a chemical defense mechanism. In addition, ingestion of saxitoxin-containing mackerel has been implicated in the death of humpback whales

Additional cases where PSP was suspected as the cause of death in Mediterranean monk seals (Monachus monachus) in the Mediterranean Sea have been questioned due to lack of additional testing to rule out other causes of mortality.

Read more about this topic:  Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning

Famous quotes containing the words wild and/or marine:

    A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below,—such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    God has a hard-on for a Marine because we kill everything we see. He plays His game, we play ours.
    Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)