ZAMBOANGA CITY, 10 April 2005 — Two persons died and five more were hospitalized after eating crabs in the southern province of Surigao del Sur, the military said yesterday.
The victims had feasted on crabs they caught at sea in the coastal town of Bislig on Friday and later complained of dizziness and stomach pains and were puking, said Major Alexis Bravo, spokesman of the army’s 4th Infantry Division which covers the Caraga Region of northeastern Mindanao.
Neighbors and government militias rushed the victims to hospital, but a 55-year old woman and a five-year old boy, died along the way, Bravo quoted field reports from Surigao as saying.
He said they were trying to confirm sketchy reports that four other people had died. “They say four people died from red tide poisoning, but this is still unconfirmed,” he told Arab News by phone.
Five other family members were also reported poisoned and hospitalized. Neighbors suspected the crabs were either venomous or contaminated by red tide toxin, officials said.
Red tide is a naturally occurring, high concentration of the microscopic algae, which produces the toxin that affects mostly fish and shellfish, among others.
When red tide algae reproduce in dense concentrations, they are visible as discolored patches of ocean water, often reddish in color. More than 170 people have died from paralytic shellfish poisoning since 1983.
Ten people also died from eating poisonous crabs in the country the past two decades. Venomous crabs deliberately harvest toxins from all kinds of poisonous sea urchins, sea anemones and seaweeds, and concentrate them in their bodies.
There are at least 9 known species of venomous crabs in the Philippines.
