Mother Nature is in the midst of the world’s biggest clambake.
Wildlife experts say the historic heatwave that has affected the western part of the U.S. and parts of Canada is responsible for cooking millions of shellfish alive.
Marine biologist Chris Harley told the Washington Post that he estimates 1 billion small sea creatures, including mussels, snails and clams, have been boiled by the rise in temperature in the Salish Sea.
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His research team has reported finding rocks along the shoreline heated to as much as 122 degrees.
Mussels in particular are built to withstand extreme heat, storing water inside their shells and growing in beds that provide thermal protection. But even they succumbed to the temperatures in large numbers.
Losing large numbers of shellfish could throw off the entire ecosystem, according to marine biologist Emily Carrington. Carrington told the Washington Post that just their presence is crucial to the environment in which they live, due to the way they filter a high volume of water and their place in the food chain.
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Harley hopes losing such large amounts of shellfish to a heat wave will serve as a “wake up call,” saying, “The pandemic was a big, scary, intimidating problem, and most of us were willing to make a few small changes that really helped. We can do the same thing with climate change.”
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