The Presence of Pseudo-nitzschia australis in North Atlantic Aquaculture Sites, Implications for Monitoring Amnesic Shellfish Toxins

Callum Whyte; Sarah C Swan; Andrew D Turner; Robert G Hatfield; Elaine Mitchell; Shannon Lafferty; Nadine Morrell; Stepahanie Rowland-Pilgrim; Keith Davidson

doi:10.3390/toxins15090554

The Presence of Pseudo-nitzschia australis in North Atlantic Aquaculture Sites, Implications for Monitoring Amnesic Shellfish Toxins

Toxins (Basel). 2023 Sep 5;15(9):554. doi: 10.3390/toxins15090554.

Authors

Callum Whyte¹, Sarah C Swan¹, Andrew D Turner², Robert G Hatfield², Elaine Mitchell¹, Shannon Lafferty¹, Nadine Morrell², Stepahanie Rowland-Pilgrim², Keith Davidson¹

Affiliations

¹ Scottish Association for Marine Science, Oban, Argyll PA37 1QA, UK.
² Centre for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, The Nothe, Barrack Road, Weymouth, Dorset DT4 8UB, UK.

Abstract

The farming of shellfish plays an important role in providing sustainable economic growth in coastal, rural communities in Scotland and acts as an anchor industry, supporting a range of ancillary jobs in the processing, distribution and exporting industries. The Scottish Government is encouraging shellfish farmers to double their economic contribution by 2030. These farmers face numerous challenges to reach this goal, among which is the problem caused by toxin-producing microplankton that can contaminate their shellfish, leading to harvesting site closure and the recall of product. Food Standards Scotland, a non-ministerial department of the Scottish Government, carries out a monitoring programme for both the toxin-producing microplankton and the toxins in shellfish flesh, with farms being closed when official thresholds for any toxin are breached. The farm remains closed until testing for the problematic toxin alone, often diarrhetic shellfish toxin (DST), shows the site to have dropped below the regulatory threshold. While this programme has proved to be robust, questions remain regarding the other toxins that may be present at a closed site. In this study, we tested archival material collected during site closures but only tested for DSTs as part of the official control monitoring. We found the presence of amnesic shellfish toxin (AST) in low concentrations in the majority of sites tested. In one case, the level of AST breached the official threshold. This finding has implications for AST monitoring programmes around Europe.

Keywords: Dinophysis; North Atlantic; Pseudo-nitzschia australis; aquaculture; microplankton; monitoring; shellfish; toxins.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Aquaculture
Diatoms*
Marine Toxins* / toxicity
Seafood
Shellfish / analysis

Substances

Marine Toxins

Grants and funding

University of the Highlands and Islands Aquaculture Industry Engagement Fund (AIEF), with additional funding from the UK BBSRC/NERC project Off-Aqua (Evaluating the Environmental Conditions Required for the Development of Offshore Aquaculture)—BB/S004246/1 and the Interreg Atlantic Area Programme Project PRIMROSE (grant no. EAPA_182/2016). Sequencing of cultures was performed using funding and methods derived from the UK Seafood Innovation Fund, project: RD011 Shellfish Food Safety and Animal Health—A unified strategy for detecting multiple biological threats on a single platform.