In all my research on fish, I don't recall coming across mentions of the toxic nature of some wrasse species of fish. Growing up in the USA, like everyone else here, I heard often of the toxicity of pufferfish (fugu), but that wasn't a worry because they only ate it in faraway Japan. However, we have fish living off the US coast that can also cause health problems.
Yesterday, while looking around in my big, old dictionary, I came across a mention of the senorita fish species, which lives off the coast of California. It is part of a group of fish called wrasses, and they can be toxic. Toxic, as in put-you-in-a-coma toxic. Here's one study describing the health effects of the humphead wrasse:
"In addition to the gastrointestinal, neurological and other features that were typical of ciguatera, some subjects developed sinus bradycardia, hypotension, shock, neuropsychiatric features (e.g. mental exhaustion, depression, insomnia and memory loss), other central nervous system symptoms (e.g. coma, convulsions and ataxia) and myocardial ischaemia. Other subjects still experienced residual symptoms 6 months later; these were mainly neurological or neuropsychiatric complaints and skin pruritus."
See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24141055/
My father is a Californian, and I grew up hearing stories from him about how Californians would go catch a fish with their bare hands at night in "grunion fishing" outings. But I never met anyone who'd actually made such an outing, and they seemed mythical with how my dad described them. It's unfortunate that he didn't have more solid, interesting fish stories to tell us.
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