Ciguatoxin prevalence in 4 commercial fish species along an oceanic exposure gradient in the US Virgin Islands

Abstract

Ciguatera fish poisoning is a seafood-toxin illness resulting from consumption of fish contaminated with ciguatoxins. Managing ciguatera fish poisoning is complex. It is made easier, however, by local fishers from endemic areas reporting regional predictability for local fish species' ciguatera fish poisoning risk, which the present study then tested. We investigated the prevalence of ciguatoxins in 4 commonly marketed and consumed species (Balistes vetula, Haemulon plumierii, Ocyurus chrysurus, and Epinephelus guttatus) across an oceanic gradient (north, south, east, and west) from the US Virgin Islands. Fish muscle extracts were analyzed for Caribbean ciguatoxins using an in vitro mouse neuroblastoma (N2a) cytotoxicity assay and confirmed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Fish collected from the north location had 0 fish with detectable ciguatoxins; this site also had the greatest wave energy. Caribbean ciguatoxins in fish ranged from 0.01 to 0.11, 0.004 to 0.10, and 0.005 to 0.18 ng Caribbean ciguatoxin-1 eq/g, from the west, east, and south respectively. Ciguatoxin-like activity was detectable by the N2a assay in 40, 41, 50, and 70% of H. plumierii, O. chrysurus, B. vetula, and E. guttatus, respectively. Of the fish collected, 4% had Caribbean ciguatoxin levels exceeding the US Food and Drug Administration guidance of 0.1 ng Caribbean ciguatoxin-1 eq/g fish. These findings concurred with spatial ciguatera fish poisoning prevalence information provided by local fishers in the US Virgin Islands and demonstrate how partnerships between researchers and fishers can aid the improvement of science-based ciguatera fish poisoning management. Environ Toxicol Chem 2018;39:1852-1863. Published 2018 Wiley Periodicals Inc. on behalf of SETAC. This article is a US government work and, as such, is in the public domain in the United States of America.

Ciguatoxin Occurrence in Food-Web Components of a Cuban Coral Reef Ecosystem: Risk-Assessment Implications

“…Such a high prevalence of fish contamination is not uncommon in hot spots in the Caribbean. For example, CTX was found in 74% of a sample set of commercialized species in the US Virgin Islands (USVI) [12], and in 60% of the barracudas in Marathon Key, Florida [17]. On the other hand, toxicity comparison to other studies is limited by the use of either different testing methodology or toxin reference standard used.…”

“…g −1 fish) [37,38], but to our knowledge there are no studies in the Caribbean with which we can directly compare. Flesh of fish from the Virgin Islands [12] were found to contain from 0.005 to 0.18 ng C-CTX1 equiv. g −1 , using a cytotoxicity assay CBA-N2A.…”

“…In the Caribbean region, ciguatera poisoning has been associated with carnivorous fish species belonging primarily to the families Carangidae, Lutjanidae, Sphyraenidae, Scombridae, and Serranidae [8,9]. Biotoxins, identified as Caribbean-ciguatoxins (C-CTXs) have been chemically characterized from the tissues of carnivorous species, including invertebrate feeders and benthic or pelagic predators [10][11][12][13][14][15]. The two most commonly found C-CTXs include C-CTX1 and its energetically less-favoured epimer C-CTX2 [11,16], being the proportion of C-CTX1 in these carnivores highly variable [13,[17][18][19][20].…”

Scaling Up From Regional Case Studies to a Global Harmful Algal Bloom Observing System

“…The challenge is to prevent CFP in local populations whose main protein source is seafood, and one possible solution would be the banning of commercial sales of species that have been consistently linked to poisoning events, such as barracuda (Reglamento de Pesca de Puerto Rico, 2004 27 ). Recent studies suggest that the spatial distribution of toxic fish is defined by environmental gradients in grazing (Loeffler et al, 2018), wave energy (Loeffler et al, 2015), and temperature. These results suggest the possibility of establishing guidelines for "no take" zones as a risk management strategy.…”

“…The best documented impacts are associated with "red FIGURE 5 | Average wave power per unit wave crest in the United States Virgin Islands computed using model output from the CARICOOS Nearshore Wave Model. Site locations are within the white boxes (Loeffler et al, 2018).…”