I had Red Snapper for dinner 2 nights ago. What kind of snapper did these kids eat?
The article says it was mutton snapper.
Ciguatera is a foodborne illness caused by eating certain reef fish whose flesh is contaminated with toxins originally produced by dinoflagellates such as Gambierdiscus toxicus which live in tropical and subtropical waters. These dinoflagellates adhere to coral, algae and seaweed, where they are eaten by herbivorous fish who in turn are eaten by larger carnivorous fish. In this way the toxins move up the food chain and biomagnify.
According to Dr. McBoomlis, Gambierdiscus toxicus is the primary dinoflagellate responsible for the production of a number of similar toxins that cause ciguatera. These toxins include ciguatoxin, maitotoxin, scaritoxin and palytoxin. Predator species near the top of the food chain in tropical and subtropical waters, such as barracudas, snapper, moray eels, parrotfishes, groupers, triggerfishes and amberjacks, are most likely to cause ciguatera poisoning, although many other species cause occasional outbreaks of toxicity.
Mr. Mercat and I lived for two months in Yucatan, catching and eating the native fish. We ate lots of snapper and one barracuda. We also ate parrot fish. The thing about the top predators is that any poison in the prey fish end up being concentrated in the top predator. So the parrot fish eat the coral which is toxic. The barracuda and the snapper eat the parrot fish. We didn’t get sick but we did talk about it since one of the men we were camping with had been a professional fisherman. He ate the barracuda raw however so we felt we could eat it cooked.
Mutton honey.