Mussels and oysters cooked in Canadian heat
The unprecedented heat wave that hit British Columbia, Canada last week,
Many marine animals such as mussels and oysters died on the western shores of the country. Christopher Harley, a professor of zoology at the University of British Columbia, found countless mussels dead and rotting in their shells on Kitsalano Beach, near Vancouver.
“I could have smelled this beach before I arrived, because there were already many dead animals from the day before, which were not the hottest of the three. [dias]. I just started looking at my local beach and thought, ‘Oh that, this can’t be good,’ I said CNN
.
When the animals were found, temperatures in Vancouver reached 38.6 degrees Celsius. According to Professor Harley, mussels generally cannot withstand temperatures above 37°C for a very long time.
According to scientists, an unprecedented heat wave in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest in the United States is linked to climate change. According to them, this can become more and more frequent and severe.
“We saw heat records over the weekend to be broken again the next day,” Christina Dahl, chief climate scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told CNN. “Especially for a part of the country where this kind of heat doesn’t happen very often,” he continues.
According to Christopher Harley, the extreme heat may have killed up to a billion mussels and other sea creatures in the Salish Sea, which includes the Strait of Georgia, Puget Strait, and Juan de Fuca Strait.
