Unalaska, AK – Summertime in the Aleutian Islands means enjoying the subsistence harvest and digging into things like halibut, salmon, king crab - but not clams or mussels. A project undertaken by the Aleutians Pribilof Islands Association has revealed a dangerous level of toxins that could lead to paralytic shellfish poisoning, or PSP, in shellfish across the region.

The group doing this work is called the Response to Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning in Aleut Communities project, and they're funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and managed by APIA. They've found fatal levels of PSP toxins in shellfish from Sand Point to Akutan to Unalaska.

The results for Akutan were released just yesterday and they show that mussels are testing at almost five times the FDA-level for PSP toxicity. What's especially strange is that the island doesn't seem to have a history of PSP problems. Bruce Wright is a senior scientist with APIA, and he says that he hasn't seen levels this high here before.

"It seems to be one of those places that seems to be relatively PSP-free, and it looks like our data up until this last month has shown this to be the case," says Wright. "And then boom - you can see that mussels shot up really high. Their levels are around 390, and the FDA limit again is 80."

Unalaska's shellfish also experienced a mid-summer jump. In May, it was testing at 30 micrograms per 100 grams, well below the toxin limit of 80. In the warmer month of July, that level jumped to 331. Sand Point's shellfish is even more toxic: The samples tested there came in at 926. That's over eleven times the toxicity cut-off, and much higher than its recorded rates have ever been.

PSP can cause death by paralyzing internal organs and making it difficult to breathe. Wright says that more and more cases seem to be popping up across the state.

"Whenever I gave a presentation in a community, everybody in the audience would say either I've had those symptoms' or somebody they knew had those symptoms in the last few years," says Wright. "The symptoms are tingling of your fingers or lips, numbness of your lips, nausea or headaches, slurred speech. These are all PSP symptoms."

Wright has studied PSP in the region since 1978, but says that monitoring has only been intermittent because of lack of resources. APIA last tested Unalaska shellfish in 2006 and even then summer levels were high. Wright says that there is a lot of interest in his work from subsistence harvesters, but that he can't exactly provide answers to all of their questions.

"There's so much going on with PSP right now, because people are dropping dead and levels are high all up and down the coast," says Wright. "So there's a million questions out there, and we have no funding or support to answer those quest. We don't know if it's a climate change issue or something else."

In Unalaska, word about the PSP toxin levels has spread through the Qawalangin tribe and the city's clinic. The Department of Environmental Conservation has also been distributing literature on PSP. There's been an effort to reach out to seasonal workers and non-native speakers who might not be familiar with the risk of eating shellfish. Becky Sheffield is an environmental health officer at the DEC, and she says that the department has provided information in seven different languages to the fish processing plants.

"It's something I believe most of the processors go over in their orientation - that it's not good to consume the mussels and shellfish and things like that from the area," says Sheffield. "The water may look clean, but it's an organism you can't see, so it's just not good to do it."

The city of Akutan has been doing similar outreach. Mayor Joseph Bereskin says that while subsistence harvesting still happens in Akutan, it has declined in popularity and that this probably a good thing. No cases have been reported there yet, and he's hoping that none will.

"Knock on wood," says Bereskin.

There also haven't been any report of PSP cases in Sand Point or Unalaska. In June, five cases of PSP were reported in the state, resulting in one death.