Looks like microplastics aren’t the only things mussels are having trouble coping with. If you recall the news about the Filipino ‘Tahong’ has returned with samples that tested positive for microplastics, then you probably won’t be glad to hear that mussels along a Californian beach were cooked alive due to high temperatures.
After consecutive days of intense heat which reached up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius), the unusual heatwave managed to kill the mussels along a marine reserve and fishing community, Northern California’s Bodega Bay.
Bodega Marine Reserve research coordinator, Jackie Sones said: “Mussels are known as a foundation species. The equivalent are the trees in a forest– they provide shelter and habitat for a lot of animals, so when you impact that core habitat it ripples throughout the rest of the system.”
The mussels were roasted right insider their shells where they were found washed ashore and already fully cooked, according to HuffPost.
“Every part of the mussel bed I touched, there were mussels that had died,” Sones told Bay Nature magazine.
“These events are definitely becoming more frequent, and more severe. Mussels are one of the canaries in the coal mine for climate change, only this canary provides food and habitat for hundreds of other species,” said Christopher Harley, a biologist at the University of British Columbia.
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