Origins of Dinophysis blooms which impact Irish aquaculture

Raine, Robin, Barnett, Michelle and Purdie, Duncan (2017) Origins of Dinophysis blooms which impact Irish aquaculture. In, Proença, Luis A.O. and Hallegraeff, Gustaaf M (eds.) Proceedings of the 17th International Conference of Harmful Algae. International Society for the Study of Harmful Algae, pp. 46-49.

Abstract

The main unresolved issue with Dinophysis blooms and their contamination of shellfish with DSP toxins has been the identification of their source. From cruises covering the shelf region south of Ireland over the past years, it was shown that extensive blooms of D. acuta develop in summer in the productive region close to the Celtic Sea Front, a tidal front extending from southeast Ireland across to Britain. Of particular note has been the development of D. acuta populations with cells ranging from 2,000 cells L-1 to 55,000 (2014) and 75,000 (2015) cells L-1 located in a layer at the top of the sub-surface chlorophyll fluorescence maximum.Despite the blooms being localized to stratified water adjacent to the tidal front, they extended over a very large area. Over the rest of the Celtic Sea Shelf, cell densities were less than 100 cells L-1 at this time. These blooms are transported westwards along the south coast of Ireland towards the economically important shellfish culture region of southwest Ireland where they subsequently do harm. The source of these Dinophysis blooms is thus in excess of 300 km from their point of impact

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Contributors

Author: Michelle Barnett

Author: Duncan Purdie

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