reported in 1970s (roy 1977). over the last three decades,
hundreds of poisoning cases including human casualty
have been reported almost annually (Usup & Azanza 1998;
Usup et al. 2012). In Peninsular Malaysia the first PSP case
was reported from Sebatu, Malacca, where the national
mussel cultivation project was implemented. Three people
were hospitalized and mussels from the areas were banned
for years. The organism that responsible for the events was
identified as A. tamiyavanichii (Figure 2(f)) several years
later (Lim 1999). This toxic dinoflagellate species was
confined to tropical and subtropical waters, with records
from Thailand (Fukuyo et al. 1989), Philippines (Montojo
et al. 2003) and Japan (nagai et al. 2003).