Dynamics of toxic phytoplankton species along the Catalan coast (NW Mediterranean Sea)

Abstract

There is a general concern that HABs are increasing worldwide maybe as a consequence of some factors favoring proliferations or maybe due to an increase of sampling efforts and the improvement of detection methods. To solve this question, studies on the dy-namics of these algal species are required in places with a similar frequency sampling over a long period of time. Using time series of phytoplankton from several stations along the Catalan coast (NW Mediterranean), we analyze the trends of potentially toxic species. The objective was to determine if the proliferations of toxic species increased during the study period (2000-2012) along the Catalan coast.While the blooms of potentially PSP producer species, increased in general in many of the confined stations studied, due to the increase of A. minutum, the A. pacificum were not more detected in most of the stations during the last years of the study period. The blooms of DSP producer species did not shown an increase but there was also a clear increase in the number of blooms of the genus Pseudo-nitzschia (genus with species potentially producing ASP toxicity) as a consequence of the increasing abundances in most of the confined stations