On August 6, 2010, a 16-year-old teenage girl and her 47-year-old mother went to a hospital emergency department with diarrhea, light-headedness, and pins and needles sensations around their body after eating barracuda that was purchased at a New York fish market; hours later, four more family members who had eaten the fish arrived at the hospital with the same symptoms.

About a year later, four people got the same illness after eating grouper at a Manhattan restaurant. One was a man who swam two miles a day before his illness and wound up with severe walking difficulties for several months afterward.