It is believed that Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic film, “The Birds,” was inspired by an actual event that occurred in California in August of 1961. During this event, thousands of birds along the North Monterey shore were reported to display erratic behavior, including vomiting and death. While the cause of this..Read More

Six fatalities and over a hundred illnesses were caused by a paralytic shellfish poisoning outbreak in San Francisco in 1927. Read more about this event here.

The Gulf of Mexico has a long history of fish kill events. One such event, documented in 1975 in Veracruz, Mexico, was accompanied by symptoms of respiratory irritation and is believed to have been caused by the red tide dinoflagellate Karenia brevis. Read more about this event here.

Earliest reports of red tide in Florida. Read more here.  

A hunting part in southeastern Alaska became ill after eating a meal of mussels. Nearly 100 members of the party died, and based on details of the accounts it is believed that paralytic shellfish poisoning was the cause. Read more here.

One one of the earliest reports of paralytic shellfish poisoning comes from British Columbia, where a member of Captain George Vancouver’s crew was killed after eating contaminated shellfish. Local tribes in the region had taboos on eating shellfish during bioluminescent dinoflagellate blooms. Read more here.

After eating fresh fish caught off the coast of Vanuatu (South Pacific), members of Captain Cook’s crew experienced illness characterized by upset stomach, vomiting, and weakness. These symptoms are indicative of ciguatera poisoning, which occurs when fish accumulate ciguatoxins, produced by members of the dinoflagellate genus Gambierdiscus. Read more here.

An early report of ciguatera was recorded by the Spanish explorer Fernandez de Quiros in 1606 during a voyage in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu). This account described poisoning of his sailors after consuming snapper (Pargos sp.). Read more here.

There is a reference to algal blooms in the Bible, ‘ . . . all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood. And the fish that was in the river died; and the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink of the water of the..Read More

A group of well-preserved mammal fossils, dated from 47 million years ago, indicates that a large mammal mortality occurred in Messel, Germany. These fossils include the remains of primitive horses, birds and bats, and are accompanied by geologic evidence of cyanobacterial blooms. Read more here and find the original paper here.