Harmful algal blooms can have direct impacts on aquatic life, for example fish kills, and on human health, for example paralytic shellfish poisoning. Harmful algal blooms are often a result of excessive nutrient loads in a water body allowing certain species of algae to increase rapidly in number. Therefore efforts to reduce nutrient loads in waterways can have direct impacts on improved human health. The map shows the number of reported harmful algae blooms for the period 1980 to 2015. The data are based on the harmful algae event database (HAEDAT, http://haedat.iode.org) and are displayed by Coastal Segmentation and related CATchments (COSCAT). postal