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This Seaweed’s Not for Sushi

October 14, 2007[From left] Biologists Don Anderson (WHOI), Deana Erdner (University of Texas and former member of Anderson’s lab) and Robert Dickey (U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory) traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands to collect seaweed that host algae that cause ciguatera fish poisoning. The single-celled, toxin-producing Gambierdiscus alga lives on seaweed stalks that are eaten by fish, which can then sicken human who consume the tropical fish. Anderson and colleagues are investigating how and where these harmful algae live because they sicken more than 50,000 people a year around the world. (Photo by Lauren Anderson, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)