Galicia closes a third of mussel polygons because of resurgent bio-toxic red tide

Wednesday, August 13th 2014 - 22:12 UTC

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The Xunta of Galicia in the northwest of Spain banned the extraction of mussels in 18 of the 55 floating nurseries of the autonomous region, that is to say, in 32% of the total capacity because of the presence of lipophilic biotoxin. Read full article

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Sergio Vega
It seems this phenomenom there is far less dangerous than tha red tide we suffer here in Magallanes were the bio-toxine is deadly if those affected with it aren´t treated son enough. This bio-toxine haven´t effects on the holder bivalves, so it can´t be discovered just sighing them, so a laboratory test is required and here we have not bivalves farms so the fishermen have to catch them on the channel shores that we have in a big quantity even very far from the main cities of the Región de Magallanes. In the Región de los Lagos they have bivalves farm and they have suffered red tide attacks but like in Galicia with no casualties.
At the moment. and after a lot of years of studies and investigation, have not been discovered the final cause of the production of this bio-toxine by the bivalves, but it´s influenced by the sea water salinity and temperature, movement of the tides and other parameters, so it has very high variability and the fishing and health authorities must do continuous control trips around the catching áreas to ensure that the level of contamination is under the dangerous ones and each arrival of bivalves catch to every ports must give a test simple of it to the health authority to get a certificate for the lot to be sold at the fish & shelfish shops to the people. Another caractheristic of this bio-toxine is that it´s not eliminated even under cooking so the only way to exploit those contamined catching areas is to wait for the natural decrease that could happens eventually in the future by changes in the sea water conditions.
We have had this problem for a long time ago so we are used to live with it.
Some historians have proposed that the Spaniards that arrived to the Magallanes Strait with Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa to establish a colony on it´s shores on 1584 suffered with the red tide considering that the bivalves were their main food, after their supplies from Spain were eaten and ammunition for hunting shooted, which leads them to death.
Aug 14th, 2014 - 02:40 am - Link - Report abuse 0
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