Doubling the number of biotoxin monitors and testing stations up and down the Maine coast will help the Maine Department of Marine Resources keep a closer watch on red tide this summer.

But the winds and weather the last few days have already blown in enough toxins to cause the first of the inevitable clam flat closures of the season.

Southern Maine, traditionally the portion of the coastline affected earliest when the bloom of red tide moves inshore, is again the first point that has gained monitors’ attention.

The DMR announced at noon Thursday a new closure for clams from Potts Point in Harpswell to Small Point in Phippsburg.

Last year, between May and August, as much as 75 percent of the entire coast was closed for shellfish at any given time during the season.

“We will continue to keep a close eye on everything in western Maine,” Darcie Couture, DMR’s director of biotoxin monitoring, said on Thursday of the end-of-week plans for testing.

“We will also be stepping up our sampling in the Greater Casco Bay area, which should keep us on top of any changes that may be coming.”

Red tide – the scourge of the seafood industry in summer – is an offshore algae outbreak that, once in coves, raises toxic scores and, in turn, consumer alarm. Red tide infects shellfish and can make people sick if they eat infected products.

During the peak of the red tide event last year, from May through August, a total of 7.2 million pounds of shellfish were landed from Maine waters. All went to market – with no reported illnesses, according to the DMR.

That figure includes mussels, soft-shell clams, hard clams, razor clams and oysters, all of which were heavily affected by the red tide closures.

In an ordinary year less affected by red tide, normal landings of shellfish would number closer to 15 or 20 million pounds.

Last year’s closures in Maine cost the industry dearly.

“Maine seafood is guaranteed to be safe,” Couture said Thursday. “We can’t risk a product recall. If you see Maine seafood on the market, you can be positive it’s safe. We proved that last year.”

The federal Food and Drug Administration regulates the safe level of toxins, and the action level is a score of 80. For consumers, that translates to about 80 micrograms of toxin in a 100-gram service of shellfish meat, such as a plate of 20 or 30 mussels.

“We start checking for rising numbers well before we expect to see anything,” Couture said.

Scores of 30s, 40s and 50s are safe, and the DMR watches more closely when scores move into the high 60s or low 70s. That’s when an area would be considered for closure.

“It’s a balance,” Couture said. “We don’t want to close too early and keep harvesters and dealers from their livelihoods.”

The source of all of Maine’s red tide is the massive cyst bed on the ocean floor in the Bay of Fundy, outside the mouth of Cobscook Bay. The bed has never moved – it has been there for hundreds of years.

“It’s a very unpredictable area,” Couture said. “It can get toxic almost instantly and catch us by surprise.”

It is also like clockwork. If red tide strikes big, it tends to start sooner in the warmer waters of western and southern Maine in May. Eastern Maine harvesters and dealers generally don’t get hurt until June.

“All of the scientists are holding their breath right now, waiting to see how things go,” Couture said. “We are seeing some rising toxicity; the scores we are seeing are fairly high and it’s still early in the season for that.”

Responding to calls for more testing for red tide, the Legislature this spring dedicated $250,000 toward the DMR’s testing efforts. Intended to cover the two-year budget cycle, the boost in funding will allow for more testing stations and for more frequent sampling.

“Hopefully this will allow us to keep some small areas open a little longer than closing an entire bay, as we had to do last year,” Couture said. “Then once the big blooms are over, we can open those areas more quickly.”

The DMR will have seven new testers in place by June, nearly doubling the department’s staff capacity of last season.

The positions will spread out statewide. Three will be at the DMR’s lab at West Boothbay Harbor; one will work in the Penobscot area; two will be assigned to the Lamoine lab; and one will be dedicated to Washington County.

Last year’s red tide bloom was the worst in Maine and New England in more than 30 years.

There is currently a coast-wide closure for whole scallop tissue that actually has been in effect for years. The shuck-at-sea rule means that only scallop meat can be landed and that all of the scallop’s goopy insides – the part where red tide toxins accumulate – must be left behind.

Although scallop tissue has a market in both Europe and Asia, the local industry has adapted to the scallop-meat only limitation that has been in effect since the 1990s.

The other deep-water shellfish, quahogs – also called mahogany clams – are carefully monitored to the point that just a concentration of beds off of Jonesport is open for harvesting. But even the Jonesport area was closed for some weeks last summer when the quahogs took up more of the toxin.