USA and Canada: Heat kills marine animals and endangers fish

Christopher Harley is a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia in Canada Vancouver. There he deals with the impact of climate change on coastal waters. The weather forecast recently caused a heat wave in the Pacific Northwest from United States of America Announcing Harley in Canada, he began to wonder: What will the declared extremes of temperatures do for the creatures that live in the beach areas exposed at low tide?

A few days later he got his answer – and it was scary, like a researcher now It was reported in the New York Times. The first thing he noticed was the smell and the smell of caries. He had seen countless dead marine animals, especially mussels and starfish. “The more you walk and the more you see, the more real things get,” Harley said. “It just kept going over and over again.”

Mussels, an ecologically important species, were particularly affected, as the organisms’ shells had partially opened as if they had been cooked. Harley is now working on estimates of how many mussels have died from the heat. But for him, there is no doubt that there are several million. Other organisms such as barnacles, hermit crabs and other crustaceans, and various worms, such as young sea cucumbers, are also greatly affected. The researcher now wants to investigate their fate in detailed studies. His initial conclusion: “It feels like it’s in a post-apocalyptic movie.”

Harley also reports that clams on the shady northern sides of the rocks have better weathered the heat. The fauna in the intertidal zone is generally strong. But if the heat phases follow each other too quickly, the species will not have enough time to recover.

Tanker fish

In the western United States, experts are also concerned about the fate of freshwater fish. These animals are also noticeably disturbed by the intense heat, as it also causes warmer water temperatures in inland rivers and lakes. On the Snake River in the state Idaho It is for this reason that the rare salmon was specifically caught and transported to the breeding stations by tankers. There, the conditions for their survival need to be better designed – until officials decide how the animals will survive.

at California There are also problems with extremely high water temperatures, for example for salmon, which no longer exists due to the Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River. Pacific She lays her eggs there instead. Biologists fear that 90 percent of eggs and young animals could die because they are too warm.

Recently, it was said that temperatures in heat-affected areas should drop slightly. However, it should still be very hot in the coming days. Recently there have been massive problems with forest fires in the area below Others are not far from Yosemite National Park in California. Quick study The World Weather Attribution Group suggested last week that a heat wave in America would be “almost impossible” without climate change.