Mussels and Clams Cooked in Canadian Heat
An unprecedented heat wave hit British Columbia, Canada last week,
Many marine animals such as mussels and shellfish were killed on the beaches of the country’s west. Countless mussels were found dead and rotting in their shells at Kitsalano Beach near Vancouver by Christopher Harley, a professor of zoology at the University of British Columbia.
“I could smell that beach before I arrived, because there were many dead animals the day before, which was not the warmest of the three. [dias]. I just started looking at my local beach and I thought, ‘Oh this, this can’t be nice,’ I said CNN
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When these animals were found, the temperature in Vancouver reached 38.6 ° C. According to Professor Harley, mussels generally cannot survive very long in temperatures above 37 °C.
According to scientists, the unprecedented heat wave in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest in the United States is related to climate change. According to him, it can become more and more frequent and intense.
“We saw heat records over the weekend only to be broken again the next day,” Christina Dahl, senior climate scientist at 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 adds.
According to Christopher Harley, the heat may have killed up to a billion mussels and other sea creatures in the Salish Sea, including the Straits of Georgia, the Straits of Puget and the Straits of Juan de Fuca.
