Toxin delaying California crab season also inspired Hitchcock's 'The Birds'
http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_29212993/toxin-delaying-california-crab-season-also-inspired-hitchcocks
In August 1961, Capitola residents awoke to a scene that seemed straight out of a horror movie. Hordes of seabirds were dive-bombing their homes, crashing into cars and spewing half-digested anchovies onto lawns.
Famed film director Alfred Hitchcock even used the incident as research material for his then-in-progress movie "The Birds," in which flocks of deranged birds inexplicably attack a coastal town.
Just as the unexplainable avian attacks in "The Birds" have terrified movie buffs for more than half a century, the 1961 frenzy puzzled scientists for decades. They now believe the culprit was domoic acid -- the same neurotoxin that has delayed this year's Dungeness crab season in California....
So when the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported on Aug. 18, 1961 that "dead and stunned seabirds littered the streets and roads," experts could only blame the fog. When Hitchcock, who owned a house in Scotts Valley, heard about the mysterious incident, he called the Sentinel asking for more information.
