“…The negative impacts of their "blooms" (sometimes called "red tides") are extraordinarily diverse, ranging from public health threats due to toxic fish or shellfish, to destruction of marine life and significant economic loss. In recent times, the list of known, harmful phytoplankton species has grown, new phytoplankton toxins have been discovered, and the frequency of harmful blooms and their geographic range appears to be expanding (Anderson 1989, Smayda 1990). Part of the difficulty in understanding the relationships between toxic and non-toxic phytoplankton species, their mechanisms of toxigenesis, and their bloom dynamics, population structure and apparent dispersal lies in the lack of methods that allow for unambiguous identification of the species in question.…”