The goal of this site is to facilitate a better understanding of plankton blooms and the questions relating to the causes and persistence of blooms. The emphasis on this location is on Dinoflagellate blooms or red tides.
Phytoplankton are mainly unicellular or single-celled plants known as algae.
Groups of organisms belonging to the group are diatoms, dinoflagellates, and coccolithophores. The animal members of plankton are zooplankton are either grazers on phytoplankton or feeders on other zooplankton or both. Red tides are usually classified as toxic blooms of single-celled organisms that discolor seawater. Most of them are produced by certain species of dinoflagellate which may or may not be poisonous to other organisms and may or may not cause symptoms of paralytic shellfish poisoning, neurotoxic shellfish poisoning , or diarrhetic shellfish poisoning in humans eating clams, mussels, and oysters that have ingested dinoflagellates and concentrated their toxins. In North American waters red tides are produced by Gonyaulax, Alexandrium and Gynodinium are toxic, but Noctiluca is not Red Tide Links and Images Pycnocline Gonyaulax Gymnodinium images from harvard Dinoflagellate dinoflagellates swimming phytoplankton dinoflagellate menagerie For more information on ocean productivity and satellite observations of phytoplankton concentration.