This summer, you may have seen videos on TikTok of eggs being cooked on a hot sidewalk to show just how hot this summer has been, but have you seen this picture of thousands of mussels, boiled alive on a hot Vancouver beach?
If you’re a seafood fan, you’ll want to tune in because mussels weren’t the only victims of the heat waves that struck the Pacific Northwest late last June. Other shellfish like clams and oysters, and other sea animals including crabs, starfish, and barnacles were among those found suffering the same fate.
"I could smell that beach before I got to it, because there was already a lot of dead animals from the previous day,” Christopher Harley, a professor at the University of British Columbia, told CNN as he recounted what he saw at a Vancouver beach near his home. “I started having a look around just on my local beach and thought, 'Oh, this, this can't be good.'"
The combination of low tides exposing the animals to the sweltering midday heat, and the record high temperatures at the time (peaking at 121 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of British Columbia) created a recipe for disaster for the animals and the local industries tied to them.
In Washington, Sara Acais, co-owner of Olympic Oyster Co., estimated a 25 percent loss of her business’s supply of clams and oysters. Up in British Columbia, Joe Tarnowski, owner of Baynes Sound Oysters, faced similar losses, telling CNN that he estimates his losses to be around 30 to 40 percent of his total oyster supply.
For shellfish farmers like Acais and Tarnowski, losses like these don’t just affect business for that season — it affects business for the years to come.
“Typical beach oyster production cycles are two to three years long, so mass oyster deaths are devastating for farmers,” Jim Russel, executive director of the British Columbia Shellfish Growers Association told The Washington Post. “If you lose 80 percent of your oysters across all sizes, then you are really out of business for two or three years.”
Combine this with recurring heat waves and mass die-offs, and you’re looking at a crunch on supply and, in turn, a rise in prices for these delicious creatures. Some shellfish farmers like Bruce Brenner, owner of J.J. Brenner Oyster Company, have already begun marking up prices due to June’s massacre and the costs to clean up the disaster on their farms.
In areas that did not see major die-offs of marine animals, record high temperatures are causing record high cases of seafood-borne illnesses, instead. In a news release, the Washington State Department of Health announced a vibriosis outbreak in Washington, and by the time of its publication in mid-July, the number of vibriosis cases had already surpassed the state’s highest number of cases ever recorded for the entire month of July. Vibrio bacteria, which can be contracted by humans through raw or undercooked shellfish, thrive in warm temperatures, leading Washington officials to link the recent heat wave to the state’s recent spike in the disease.
Human induced climate change is at the root of this issue, with scientists claiming that without it, June’s record breaking temperatures would not have been possible. Echoing Hama Hama Oysters’ call to action in their Instagram Post, “What to do??? Please vote for politicians who are brave enough to address climate change.”
Scientists have estimated that within the Salish Sea — the area spanning from Olympia, Washington up to the Campbell River, British Columbia — the death toll of June’s heat wave is around 1 billion sea creatures. Harley, who researches ecology and evolution, thinks these numbers may be much higher.
“This is a preliminary estimate based on good data,” Harley tells NPR, "but I'm honestly worried that it's a substantial underestimate.”
Huge losses like these among one or a few species have rippling effects throughout the ecosystems in which they live. A hit to shellfish like mussels, clams, and oysters affects animals higher up in the food chain that rely on them as food, as well as other animals who depend on these “filter feeders” to maintain the quality of the seawater they live in.
No matter what angle you are looking from, whether it’s from the perspective of a marine scientist, or someone who just enjoys seafood as a delicacy, this news and these images of sun-baked sea creatures across the Pacific Northwest should be alarming.
The sad part? This is just one of many reminders that climate change is here, and it’s happening now.
You may be wondering what we can do about this, if anything. For the seafood businesses who were impacted and will continue to be impacted by climate change, support local restaurants and the local farmers who supply them, as well as scientists and policy-makers working towards protecting and restoring our oceans.
And for our planet, stay informed, support environmentally-conscious businesses, and vote for business, political, and world leaders who care about climate change and have the power to do something about it.