ONRC Evening Talk – “Red Tide”

February 22, 2024 1:30 am
Don Anderson is a Senior Scientist in the Biology Department of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Anderson’s research focus is on toxic or harmful algal blooms (HABs), commonly called “red tides”. He has testified ten times before Congressional committees and has been actively involved in legislation and appropriations related to HABs and hypoxia.
Don Anderson is a Senior Scientist in the Biology Department of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Anderson’s research focus is on toxic or harmful algal blooms (HABs), commonly called “red tides”. He has testified ten times before Congressional committees and has been actively involved in legislation and appropriations related to HABs and hypoxia.

The Olympic Natural Resources Center (ONRC) is hosting a Rosmond Evening Talk. Join us at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 28, 2024, for a presentation by Don Anderson from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution titled “Toxic ‘red tides’ of Alexandrium catenella’: an emerging, climate-driven threat to subsistence communities and ecosystems in the Pacific Arctic”.

The waters of western and northern Alaska, including the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort seas, are changing due to climate-driven warming, leading to an elevated risk of Alexandrium catenella blooms and paralytic shellfish toxins (PSTs). PSTs are a recognized health concern in southeastern Alaska, but the distribution, dynamics and impacts of A. catenella blooms in the northern waters of the region are largely unknown.

This talk synthesizes six years of observations and analyses (2018-2023). Key findings include: 1) exceptionally large and dense accumulation zones (cystbeds) of dormant A. catenella cysts in US waters of the eastern Chukchi and eastern Bering Sea regions, with the combined size of these features and their cyst concentrations the highest reported globally; 2) evidence that climate-driven warming of surface and bottom waters can now support complete A. catenella life cycle progression in northern and eastern cystbeds in some years; and 3) observation of massive advected blooms from sub-Arctic Bering Sea waters through Bering Strait to the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

These findings highlight growing human health and food security threats to western and northern Alaskan ecosystems and subsistence communities through annually recurrent contamination of resources throughout the food web (e.g., shellfish, fish, tunicates, seabirds, marine mammals, and more).

Join us in person in the Hemlock Forest Room at the Olympic Natural Resources Center at 1455 S. Forks Ave. Or, listen via Zoom using this link: https://washington.zoom.us/j/3834334539. ONRC Evening Talks is funded through the Rosmond Family Education Fund, an endowment that honors the contributions of Fred Rosmond and his family to forestry and the Forks community.