The Nation - News from Feb. 12, 1987

Some of the tiny plants that can cause “red tide,” making shellfish dangerous to eat, appear to follow a predictable germination cycle that may someday give scientists the key to foreseeing when the problem will occur, scientists said. The cycle was found in the organism responsible for outbreaks of shellfish poisoning in the Atlantic Ocean from Boston north into Canada, said Donald Anderson, associate scientist in the biology department at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass.