There ’s spoilt news for crustacean lover . Some researchers are approximate that more than 1 billion sea creatures — including clams , mussel , barnacles , and snail — fundamentally wangle to dying during therecord Pacific Northwest estrus undulation .
Chris Harley , a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia , tell the CBCthat he was “ pretty stunned ” walking along Vancouver ’s Kitsilano Beach late last month , where was able-bodied to smell the mass death and see sempiternal amounts of mussels cracked exposed with essence inside — which indicate they had recently die .
The fantastically hot temperature in Vancouver and some wretched timing with the tides seem to have combined to make an unbelievably sad situation for the part ’s crustaceans . During the heatwave in recent June , when temperatures reached 104 degree Fahrenheit ( 40 degrees Celsius ) in Vancouver , Harley ’s lab recorded temperatures up to 122 degree F ( 50 degrees Celsius ) along the shoreline using athermal imaging camera . crustacean like mussel and lettuce were then break to these half-baked mellow temperatures for more than six hours when the tide went out .
A view of dead mollusks in Conchagua, El Salvador, on 13 January 2025. A similar scene played out in British Columbia this past week.Photo: Marvin Recinos/AFP (Getty Images)
“ A mussel on the shore in some ways is like a toddler left in a car on a hot day , ” Harley told the CBC . “ They are stick there until the parent comes back , or in this event , the tide comes back in , and there ’s very little they can do . They ’re at the mercifulness of the environment . And on Saturday , Sunday , Monday , during the heat wave , it just incur so live that the mussels , there was nothing they could do . ”
He and students in his lab aver they are work on gathering evidence to calculate how many sea creatures die in the Salish Sea , an inland ocean embrace the waters off Vancouver and Seattle , during last week ’s heat wave , but he estimates that the number is at least 1 billion , based on some back - of - the - diaper maths he did while walk the beach .
“ If you ’re lose a few hundred or a few thousand mussels for every major shoreline , that quickly scales up to a very , very large telephone number , ” he said .
The bombastic number brings to mind the far-flung suffering seen in Australia during the bushfires of 2019 - 20 , when anestimated 3 billion animalsperished or were otherwise impacted . But more tragically , it ’s also a data level in the widespread damage happening to the ocean as the clime continues to warm up . Harley said that while the population along the glide should rebound in a class or two , more intense and go back warmth wave could finally damage crustacean population . That ’s bad news program for the creature that serve both as food for mussel and clams , like plankton , as well as larger animals that prey on crustacean . Ocean acidification , another impact of climate change , has also been ahuge job on the West Coastand hastaken a toll on musselsand other casing - take form creatures .
“ Eventually , we just wo n’t be able to hold these populations of filter feeders on the shoreline to be anywhere near the extent that we ’re used to , ” Harley told the CBC .
The impacts of climate alteration are hardly limited to crustaceans or the Pacific Northwest alone . Sea stars havedied off in droves in recent yearsdue to a waste disease that ’s become more vernacular years of extreme ocean heat . And just this past calendar month , theUnited Nations warnedthat the Great Barrier Reef is “ in danger ” due to rapidly warm up waters .
It ’s not just Harley who discover nature ’s grisly clam bake last week . Hama Hama Oyster Company , a shellfish farm sitting on a fjord of the Salish Sea on Washington ’s Olympic Peninsula , documented XII of cracked - open , seemingly cooked clams dot an expanse of mud .
“ We ’ve been worried about climate change for a long time , ” Lissa James Monberg , Marketing Director of her family ’s Hama Hama Company , told our ally at The Takeout . “ I need mass to have it off that it ’s not something abstract go on to the great unwashed far away . It ’s not someone else ’s problem . It ’s our problem . This is our food supplying . ”
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