MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Toxic red tide emergency in Punta Arenas: ban on all sea food

The red tide extends all along the Magellan strait coastline

Chilean Health Minister Alvaro Erazo arrived this week in Punta Arenas, extreme south of the country to head an emergency meeting with local officials given the extent of the “toxic red tide” which can be lethal for humans but also threatens the whole sea-food industry along the Magellan Strait coastline.

The high levels of toxicity registered in the samples taken forced the immediate closure of all sea food catching in the area.

The normal level of toxicity for human consumption is stipulated in a maximum 80 micrograms while the samples taken from mussels, clams, urchins showed 20.000 micrograms and in a few cases, even higher.

Erazo is scheduled to hold meetings with local sanitary authorities, plus all those offices related to fisheries and retailing of fish and sea food products.

Meantime it was reported that a local diver who lives from the extraction of mussels and had consumed two raw clams is recovering from the effects of the paralyzing toxin. Working isolated in one of the many of the islands in the region he was unaware of the ban on sea food consumption.

After spending three days in an intensive care unit at the Punta Arenas hospital he is now in intermediate care, and according to local doctors “is responding to treatment”.