Toxins produced by harmful algae has been a global food safety issue in aquaculture industry. Unlike conventional phytoplankton and shellfish monitoring techniques, solid phase adsorption toxin tracking (SPATT) simulates the contamination of filter feeding bivalves and employed passive sampling of adsorption substrates. Combined with appropriate assays such as HPLC-MS/MS and ELISA that purify and analyze algal toxins, SPATT gives early warning of harmful algal blooms and the subsequent contamination of shellfish. In this review we discussed the progress and prognosis on studies of SPATT. We elaborated the advantage of SPATT in detecting marine toxins including diarrhetic shellfish poisoning, paralytic shellfish poisoning, amnesic shellfish poisoning, ciguatoxins, cyanotoxins, and homoanatoxins. We also summarized the function of different absorbent resins such as HP-20, SP-70, SP700, SP850, SP825L, XAD4, and L-493. SPATT is an inexpensive and convenient tool for fast detection of algal toxins.