Pfiesteria has 24 life stages ... including star ameoba 



cyst from toxic zoospore 



planozygote 



Beyond PQesteria: 



Harmful Algae in Coastal Waters 



I 



Lt's been called the "cell from 

 hell" and compared — absurdly — to 

 the deadly Ebola virus. Pfiesteria 

 piscicida has been given horror movie 

 proportions by some accounts. 



But Pfiesteria is not a freak of 

 nature, nor is it a monster. It has 

 not killed people, and its threat 

 to human health has yet to be 

 proven. Rather, Pfiesteria is a 

 harmful algal bloom (HAB), 

 one of many that plague coastal 

 waters around the country. 



"HABs in general are a 

 problem that I think we should 

 be paying a lot more attention 

 to," says JoAnn Burkholder, a 

 North Carolina Sea Grant 

 researcher and codiscoverer of 

 Pfiesteria piscicida. ''Pfiesteria 

 is a recent poster child, and it's , 

 only one of many that are really 

 important in coastal areas and 

 are causing a lot of havoc." 



Virtually invisible, small numbers 

 of HABs such as Pfiesteria may live in 

 coastal waters at any time. But in the 

 right environment, they can form large 

 colonies or blooms that discolor water 

 and deplete oxygen that other marine 

 organisms need to survive. HABs also 



By Jeannie Faris Norris 



can cause human illness and death, alter 

 marine habitats through shading and 

 overgrowth, and close coastal businesses. 



The recent spate of headlines might 

 suggest otherwise, but harmful algae are 

 nothing new. They have been around for 



The toxic stages of Pfiesteria have been linked to 

 sores and fish kills, particularly among menhaden. 



thousands of years, says Barbara Doll, 

 North Carolina Sea Grant's water quality 

 specialist. The Old Testament of the 

 Bible contains the first known description 

 of a red tide, and Native Americans in 

 the Pacific Northwest were aware of 

 shellfish poisonings centuries ago. 



But in recent decades, the United 

 States has experienced an escalating 

 trend in harmful algal blooms such as 

 Pfiesteria, says Don Anderson, a 

 scientist for Woods Hole Oceanographic 

 Institution Sea Grant and one of the 

 world's leading experts on 

 HABs. 



Before the early 1970s, 

 only a few regions of the United 

 States suffered outbreaks of 

 toxic algae. Now, virtually 

 every coastal state is threatened 

 by at least one toxic species that 

 can be found over large areas. 

 Among many others, they 

 include red tides in the Gulf of 

 Mexico and along the southeast- 

 ern coast; brown tides off New 

 York and Texas; and dangerous, 

 even deadly, shellfish poisoning 

 off Maine, the Pacific North- 

 west and Alaska. 



"This is a much, much 

 bigger problem than Pfiesteria," says 

 Anderson, who leads one of the nation's 

 premier research labs addressing HABs. 

 "There are similar organisms elsewhere in 

 the country." 



Nationally, the losses to coastal 

 resources and communities may exceed 



14 HIGH SEASON 1998 



