100% Natural!
Biochemists love a good neurotoxin!
But SFGate.com notes that one of the naturally occurring neurotoxins, domoic acid, may CANCEL this year’s Dungeness crab season off the coast of San Francisco!
Poisonous domoic acid has been detected in the spindly crustaceans, prompting the California Department of Public Health to issue a warning against eating Dungeness and rock crab caught along the coastline between Oregon and Santa Barbara County. The neurotoxin can cause seizures, coma and even death in humans and animals.
The state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment on Tuesday recommended closing the year-round rock crab fishery and delaying recreational Dungeness season, which is scheduled to begin Saturday. An emergency Fish and Game Commission meeting is scheduled Thursday morning in Sacramento to decide what should be done.
The $60 million commercial crab fishery, which is scheduled to begin Nov. 15, could also be shut down, said Jordan Traverso, a spokeswoman for the Department of Fish and Wildlife. If that happens, Bay Area restaurants and other retailers would be forced to import crab from other states to fill the void, a tactic that could cause prices to shoot up by as much as $3 per pound wholesale.
Recreational crab fishing is a multimillion dollar business, but the commercial season is an even bigger deal. Every year at about this time, 150-180 boats roll out of San Francisco, Half Moon Bay and Bodega Bay to stake out territory and sink crab pots.
SFGate.com has this to say about domoic acid:
The neurotoxin, which is found in algae blooms that often proliferate in warmer water, accumulates in shellfish, mussels, anchovies, sardines and herring. When it is sufficiently dense, it attacks the hippocampus, the brain’s memory center, and can cause memory loss, tremors, convulsions and death.
The poison has killed whales, harbor porpoises, fur seals, sea otters and sea lions, huge numbers of which have recently been found convulsing with seizures, according to marine biologists.
The mysterious blooms were virtually unknown on the West Coast until the 1990s. This particular strand, known as pseudo-nitzschia, was first identified in the Monterey area in 1991 and in Southern California in 2003. It is toxic to both humans and marine mammals.
The first sign that domoic acid poisoning was causing epilepsy in sea lions came on Memorial Day in 1998 when 400 of the marine mammals washed ashore in Monterey Bay. The blooms have since become bigger and have occurred more frequently.
Department of Fish and Wildlife wardens patrolled Pier 45 today and told crabbers about the toxin. Language barriers were a problem.
“We’re just trying to get the word out,” said game warden William O’Brien. “The biggest problem we’re facing is the language barrier. A lot of the biggest groups of fishermen only speak Cantonese or Vietnamese, so letting them know has been difficult.”
-Bill at
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