If it’s not one thing, then it’s another. If it weren’t enough that the moon snails are multipying in Lubec and feasting on the clams in the mud flats, then there’s always the "Red Tide," a plankton that produces a paralytic toxin that doesn’t hurt the shellfish but does it’s damage to their upper level predators [that’s us]. So when the "Red Tide" "blooms," the shell fishermen are out of work [like now]. The tide first came to New England in 1972, and has periodically reappeared since then. Apparently, the redness is subtle because it doesn’t look red to me, so it is detected by assaying for cysts or by fluorescent photography as in the image below left.
There’s monotony to the stories of the fishing industries in New England. Whaling, for example, started by harvesting whales that came ashore, then went to coastal whaling, and finally became expeditions of up to four years into the Pacific in search of the dwindling whale population. And stories like this of over-fishing abound. But I can’t find much that suggests that we have something to do with the Red Tide. Some think it has something to do with climate change or sewage, but that’s speculative. Whatever the case, enjoy your chowder while you can..
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This is very interesting post to those of us with anything more than a passing knowledge of biological, toxin and chemical weaponry. These Red Tides are associated with the production of saxitoxin, a neurotoxin which acts as a selective sodium channel blocker and which now seems to be the finest ‘suicide’ drug known to mankind. The general production of this substance was banned by the USA under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, signed (also) in 1972.
For interest I will reproduce my own notes about saxitoxin below:
Saxitoxin
Saxitoxin is a mollusk (shellfish) poison produced by tiny marine algae (or phytoplankton) known as dinoflagellates. These dinoflagellate plankton sometimes bloom in concentrations of more than a million cells per millilitre and are then the primary cause of red tides – unpredictable and sporadic red-coloured patches of discolouration which spread over quite large stretches of ocean in warmer climates.
During these red tides, shellfish that have consumed the plankton become toxic and can cause paralysis or even death when eaten. In a scientifically purified form saxitoxin is incredibly deadly. It quickly stifles breathing and can cause death in as little as ten seconds. It is said to be at least a thousand times more potent than the German-invented nerve gas sarin.
Also known as STX and assigned the chemical weapon designation TZ, saxitoxin is a neurotoxin that acts as a selective sodium channel blocker. The blocking of the sodium channel produces a flaccid paralysis which leaves the victim relatively calm and conscious through the progression of its symptoms. Death comes about through respiratory failure and is fairly unique among toxins in that it acts as fast as it does. The official median lethal dose (LCt50) of TZ is said to be 5 mg/min/m³. Technically it is a described as a toxin, a chemical substance derived from biological origins.
The first reported (actually non-) use of saxitoxin was following the shooting down of Gary Power’s Lockheed U-2 spyplane on May 1st 1960 over Sverdlovsk, USSR. Following his return to the U.S. after a spy-swap in 1962, Powers was severely criticized for having failed to activate his aircraft’s self-destruct explosive charge, necessary in order to destroy the camera, photographic film and other related classified parts of his aircraft before his capture and its subsequent falling into enemy hands. In addition to this, others criticized him for deciding not to use an optional but previously issued CIA suicide pin.
This pin, actually a miniature drill bit with saxitoxin embedded within its flutes, was concealed inside a hollowed out and openable silver dollar, and was mounted on a necklace carried around his neck. It was ostensibly to be used to pre-emptively avoid the attendant pain and suffering in the case of torture methods being applied by the hands of his captors should the flight, conducted at extreme altitude supposedly in excess of that of any then known Soviet air defence missile, suffer ‘technical failure’. In the event he was shot down by a S-75 Dvina (SA-2) missile, and when later asked at what altitude he had been operating simply replied: “not high enough”.
President Richard M. Nixon decided in 1969 to publicly renounce US offensive use of biological and chemical weapons.
In so doing he was making preparation for introduction of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), signed by the US in 1972. On February 20th 1970 he issued National Security Decision Memorandum No. 44 on the subject of the United States policy on toxins. This document stated President Nixon’s decision to renounce the production for operational purposes, stockpiling and use in retaliation of toxins produced by bacteriological or biological processes, or by chemical synthesis. Any future military program for toxins would be confined to R&D for defensive purposes only. It also asks the Secretary of Defense to prepare recommendations for destruction of the existing stockpiles of toxin weapons and/or agents.
By September 1975 it had become clear that despite, and in apparent violation of, the Nixon administration’s decisions in 1969 and 1970, the CIA had retained in storage unauthorized small quantities of toxin chemicals. Hearings were arraigned under the auspices of the ‘Church Committee’ (named after its chairman Frank Church), and both the-then CIA Director William E. Colby and its former director Richard Helms were questioned. Also giving evidence were Nathan Gordon, the former Chief of the CIA’s Chemistry Branch, Technical Services Division, and Charles A. Senseney, a Defense Department employee who had formerly worked in the Special Operations Division of Ft. Detrick, Maryland. This was then the key US Defense Department biological and toxin research facility. Among the exhibits presented were excerpts from a CIA inventory of lethal and incapacitating agents found at a CIA building (this included 100 grams of anthrax), and papers found at a CIA building listing shellfish toxins presumably held by the agency.
According to Time Magazine of September 22nd 1975, the CIA had retained some 10.9 grams of saxitoxin, along with 8 milligrams of a similar toxin made from cobra venom. That minuscule stockpile is enough, said Frank Church, to kill “many thousands of people.” It was also said that six-tenths of a milligram of saxitoxin is a sufficient dose to kill an adult, often within an hour. There is no public record that shows that these small, although enormously potent, laboratory samples were ever ordered to be destroyed subsequent to the three-day hearings. Instead hearing exhibit number 11 lists medical researchers to whom samples were given for long-term safekeeping for possible future use. In the case of the shellfish toxin, this numbered some 72 individuals including three in the United Kingdom, one of which was based at the Microbiological Research Institute at Porton Down, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. No indication is given as to the individual sample sizes distributed, whether these varied or were all of the same exact divided quantity.