I’d never heard of ciguatera until today. I discovered it in this article over at Wired Science. What is ciguatera? It is a potentially fatal (and scary) kind of food poisoning that you can get from fish and cases of it are increasing primarily due to rising ocean temperatures. Here’s a quote from the AP article

Within hours, all six fell deathly ill. So did two dozen others from the same neighborhood. Some complained of body-wide numbness. Others had weakness in their legs. Several couldn’t speak or even open their mouths.

Here’s how warming oceans leads to this kind of food poisoning: Due to warmer ocean temperatures and increasingly greater levels of carbon dioxide (as a result of burning fossil fuels) the incidence of toxic algae blooms has increased. This toxic algae is eaten by fish (it isn’t toxic to them) who are then eaten by bigger fish. These toxins persist in the fish and eventually humans eat them (us being the top of the food chain).

Now for the real problem with ciguatera: “Currently, there is no reliable way to detect whether a fish has ciguatera. The molecule is extremely complex and differs markedly from region to region. There also is no antidote.” No way to test for it and no antidote, brilliant.

But how much of a problem is this? “In the United States, ciguatera poisonings are most frequent in Florida, Texas and Hawaii, which has seen a fivefold increase since the 1970s to more than 250 a year.”

Semi-related and very interesting: The AP article is actually chock full of all sorts of interesting and painful information that isn’t necessarily related to ciguatera. Check out this quote regarding a potential extinction vortex going on with fishing in general:

Still, Hong Kong diners pay a premium for the risky fish. Rare species like the Napoleon wrasse fetch nearly $50 a pound. The fish are increasingly shipped live from Southeast Asia and as far away as the South Pacific, raising concerns from the World Conservation Union that many species, especially groupers, could be fished out of existence.

Fishing groupers out of existence? Surely they must be joking, you say? If you’re skeptical, I recommend reading up on the passenger pigeon