In recent years, especially in the summer, when there is an increase in the temperature of seawater, some researchers from Madeira have come across what they say is a “proliferation” of toxic microalgae that can cause health problems, with symptoms coinciding with those of a flu.
The problem was pointed out, by Manfred Kaufmann, who bases his research on the analysis of the samples that have been collected mainly on the south coast of Madeira, over the last five years, finding that some microal-gas of the genus ‘Ostreopsis’ have been much more frequent.
The professor of the University of Madeira (UMa), PhD in Biological Oceanography and specialized in organisms that can produce biotoxins, stresses that the monitoring of this situation has not been done rigorously as would be desirable,” still, the collections made allow, from the outset, to realize that the presence of this microalgae has been increasing in the seas of the Region, similar to what is happening with other regions of the Atlantic.