Marine Toxins in Italy: The More You Look, the More You Find†

Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) are massive proliferations of toxic algal species that occur under appropriate climatic and environmental conditions. HABs can exert their adverse impacts both on the environment and on particular living organisms through the production of marine biotoxins. Consumption of contaminated seafood or direct exposure to marine biotoxins (swimming, aerosols etc.) can result in human illness or even death. Thousands of cases of marine-toxin-related human poisoning are reported every year on a global basis. In Italy, research on marine biotoxins has shown a continuously changing toxin profile, with most of the toxin classes known so far being found at some point in seafood and seawater. Starting in the late 1980s, with the first finding of a marine biotoxin, okadaic acid, along the Italian coastline, a number of other classes of marine toxins – namely, yessotoxins, pectenotoxins, saxitoxins, domoic acid, spirolides, palytoxins and azaspiracids – have been found. Here we provide an overview, in chronological order, of the many classes of marine biotoxins that have infested Italian seawater over the past 25 years.