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Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Killed More Than One Billion Sea Creatures
- bloniac 5y agoIt’s so, so startlingly bad I will ignore it.
- baron_harkonnen 5y agoThere's a beautiful irony in this comment being do voted, as it is people aggressively ignoring the truth of what the commenter is say regarding our habit of aggressively ignoring and denying hard truths.
- plank_time 5y agoIt’s obviously horrible, but it also means that it will allow other creatures to grow to fill that space. It’s like a forest fire. Sure the devastation is bad but there’s also renewal afterwards. It’s not like it will remain barren forever.
- magneticnorth 5y agoThe difference is that the local ecosystem has evolved for forest fires; this is a massively destabilizing event where we can't predict what the "renewal" will look like and what species will go extinct in the meantime, or how polluted the water will end up being "normally" without the mussel population to keep things in check. And I don't think the article is implying that the oceans will be barren forever, but that things are changing rapidly, unpredictably, and to an extreme degree that we have no precedent for.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoA forest fire kills the adults but retains the young (seeds). This just killed everything. There’s no comparison.
- dyeje 5y agoHow fast do these creatures reproduce? Are they going to generate billions in between now and the next hot season? How many more will die this hot season? Will even more die next hot season?
- plank_time 5y agoIt’s not “hot season”. It was a historically abnormal heat wave. I lived in Vancouver. You don’t normally see temperatures like that. It doesn’t have to reproduce right away, that’s just unrealistic. But the larger amounts of free space will mean a land grab by the survivors. That’s how it works in nature. If the climate changes and the water heats up then the ecosystem will be replaced by those animals that would survive in warmer water. That’s science.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoIts also called "ecological collapse" when a place has catastrophic dieoff. It can take decades to recover, even with species that can survive in the new conditions. (Meanwhile poor humans are trying to grow crops and raise animals. We may get very hungry, for decades)
- nautilius 5y agoYeah, the sun and Venus for example are overrun with life because there’s essentially no competition. That’s just science!
- eloff 5y agoThat's a dumb example, there's no life in those environments. You could look to the intertidal regions near the equator for more reasonable comparison. They are much less rich in life compared to the waters around Vancouver.
- nautilius 5y agoAh really, there’s no life on the sun? Hey, come to think of it — that was my point exactly!
- ji0 5y agoHow comforting to know things will regenerate after we die off from our own stupidity.
- mellavora 5y agoI fear that much of the poison we leave behind, and the extinction of so much biodiversity, will make such regeneration much slower than it would otherwise need to be. My greatest fear -- I've seen individual animals loose the will to live. What if a biotope loses the will? What if life decides not to come back?
- steve_adams_86 5y agoIt’s not that simple. As the article mentions, if weather continues to warm and these events become more common, we could end up with seasonal die outs of intertidal species. It’s not immediately evident from that statement, but that would completely transform the biodiversity of the coastline. Currently it’s one of vast abundance, but this transformation would very likely reduce that abundance and its diversity due to a foundation of the food chain disappearing regularly. It’s nice to think something would just replace these species, but they’ve already reduced dramatically over the last 100 years and nothing has begun to shoehorn its way into the system. It seems the worse this gets, the less overall abundance and diversity this coastline can support.
- plank_time 5y agoIf the waters heat up are you saying that no creatures will ever survive? That’s anti-science. There are creatures around the world that thrive in warmer waters. The space will be reclaimed by other creatures that can survive in that environment. To think otherwise goes against basic science.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago> If the waters heat up are you saying that no creatures will ever survive? That’s anti-science. • Science is a way of finding out about the world, not a list of facts. • No, actually. Rather, these creatures will die and we might lose entire species, significantly reducing biodiversity. > The space will be reclaimed by other creatures that can survive in that environment. To think otherwise goes against basic science. On an evolutionary timescale, something will fill the niche (if the environment remains constant enough for long enough… not looking likely, if you extrapolate from today), but science most certainly hasn't found that this happens with animals over the course of decades. And you know what they say about basic biology…
- plank_time 5y agoYour understanding of “science” is absurd. Yes, those creatures that died will be dead. When the environment changes and creatures are selected against, they will die out. This is called the Theory of Natural Selection. Does it suck that it’s happening in situations like this heat wave? Yes. Should we do whatever we can to stop our contribution to this? Absolutely. Should we expect that it never should happen? No, otherwise dinosaurs would be roaming the Earth right now. There have been around 20 mass extinction events in the last 500M years. Are we causing the next mass extinction event? Probably. Will we be the cause of life to end on Earth? No. Even plastic breaks down and nuclear waste becomes harmless over a geological timeline. Again, your understanding is pretty basic. Since when is the environment “stable”? Climate is always changing. To believe that the climate has to be stable in order for life to thrive is anti-science. Life will thrive. Even a nuclear catastrophe like Chernobyl and Fukushima hasn’t stopped life from taking over in time frames that scientists thought were impossible.
- ajharrison 5y agoDo you know how many sea creatures we eat every day?
- midhhhthrow 5y agoWe need some frame of reference. How many creatures typically die every year? Without that the numbers are meaningless
- giantg2 5y agoProbably a lot more than that given the population densities suggested in the article. "1 million mussels died in an area the size of a tennis court." I think they usually measure small things in terms of mass. Here is a report just for Pugent Sound that suggests annualized reproduction of about 850,000 kg. http://www.pacshell.org/carrying-capacity.asp http://www.pacshell.org/carrying-capacity.asp
- frankbreetz 5y agoI agree: >1 million mussels died in an area the size of a tennis court. So, it could be as small as 1000 tennis courts or less then 6.5 acres. Most likely it was spread over a larger area and this was a spot with a lot of life that got hit hard, but it is a frame of reference
- iask 5y agoExactly!!! These articles are just click baits. If we cannot compare this to previous data then this is just opinionated.
- inasio 5y agoWhat does the number even mean, is it a lot, what is the denominator? Doing a rough back of the envelope calculation, looking at tidal areas, barnacles and other creatures there go from one milliliter to one centimeter square, meaning that the dieoff represented 1000 square meters to 10 hectares, which in all honesty is probably not a lot
- Johnjonjoan 5y agoIf the heat die off has only effected those at the lower levels of the food web I wouldn't like to be high up in it. There's a chance we'll see increased competition among higher level organisms leading to the depletion of the same low level organisms in adjacent areas until those higher levels have a die off event too allowing them to recover.
- liketochill 5y agoTwo restaurants I have been to have advised that they can’t get oysters due to the die off that was part of the heat wave. In the inter tidal zone walking around it was a solid field of mussels before the heat wave. Maybe 10 underfoot, so say 20 per square foot or 180 per square meter.so 1,000,000,000 mussels would occupy 5,000,000 sq meters of intertidal coast. If the intertidal zone is 5m wide that is 1,000,000 meters of coast, or 1000km. If all of the mussels and oysters died in 1000km of coastline I’d say it is a significant event. Edit: a million mussels in the area the size of a tennis court? I was thinking of the clams I was walking on in June … definitely weren’t at that density
- supercanuck 5y ago>What does the number even mean, It means that climate change is affecting the food supply
- cwilkes 5y agoThe article mentions 1 million mussels in the size of a tennis court. Course they probably weren’t living that close to one another. As for the percent of the total mussel population the article didn’t say.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- BurningFrog 5y agoThis is up there with "billions of tons of CO₂" as a context free large number that sounds Really Bad.
- peytn 5y agoThe new business model for magazines like Scientific American seems to be subscription confirmation bias. I’m a former subscriber.
- spiffydave 5y agoIn other news, 288,000,000,000 pounds of seafood was consumed last year. If we give a rough estimate of 5 lbs. per animal (probably a lot less than that) that's around 60 billion animals killed last year so we can eat them. It's estimated we can add another 40% to that as unwanted by-catch. So now we have 84 billion sea creatures killed each year on purpose. If you're concerned about the environment you might consider not adding to this number. https://www.yourfishguide.com/how-many-fish-do-we-eat-a-year/ https://www.yourfishguide.com/how-many-fish-do-we-eat-a-year... https://oceana.org/sites/default/files/Bycatch_Report_FINAL.pdf https://oceana.org/sites/default/files/Bycatch_Report_FINAL....
- will4274 5y agoI mean... I have to eat. Is seafood any worse than land animal production?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoGet ready to be told to simply go vegan.
- peytn 5y agoAt some point everyone will be vegan ascetics forever apparently. Including all of our descendants, who will recognize and appreciate how enlightened we are. Curiosity and discussion about other solutions cannot be tolerated lest it jeopardize the coming worldwide ascetic veganism forever awakening.
- spiffydave 5y agoNot sure what your point was. Facts seem valuable when making individual decisions that affect the planet, especially when we wring our hands and wonder when someone else will do something to solve our environmental problems. Some of the answers are right there in front of you every day.
- williamdclt 5y ago
- tenfourwookie 5y agoIt killed most of the chipmunks in Eastern Oregon too. The June litter had just emerged, so there were hundreds of baby chipmunks about. After the heat wave, maybe 2 of 20 survived, seemingly none of the juveniles.
- Wistar 5y agoDon't know if it is related but, here in the Seattle area, I noticed yesterday that lump Dungeness crab meat at the local market has risen to $55/lb from about $30/lb two-three weeks ago.
- throwawaysea 5y agoSince Scientific American was one of the first to push false articles (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unprecedented-heat-wave-in-pacific-northwest-driven-by-climate-change/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unprecedented-hea...) claiming the PNW heatwave was primarily caused by climate change, I’m sharing this analysis from a UW Professor who is considered to be the foremost expert on northwest climate, where he shows that the event was less due to climate change and more due to a rare mix of factors (a black swan event). In other posts he mentions the record breaking event would have taken place even without climate change, but that climate change contributed a few degrees to the peak temperatures. The attribution study he is critiquing itself claims this recent event was a 1 in 1000 years event even with climate change: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/07/flawed-heatwave-report-leads-to-false.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/07/flawed-heatwave-repor... As others have mentioned it is unclear if a billion creatures is significant or not. But regardless this isn’t going to be a seasonal event.
- billjings 5y ago"In other posts he mentions the record breaking event would have taken place even without climate change, but that climate change contributed a few degrees to the peak temperatures." The reason that we refer to this phenomenon as climate change now and not global warming is that average temperature doesn't accurately capture the ways that the climate will change as it warms. We will also experience more outlier events, more heat waves and bizarre cold snaps. This is an excellent example of the former; the shift of the Arctic air off of the polar regions south produces other anomalies. But the term "climate change" is intended to capture the increased frequencies of all these kinds of anomalous events, not just the steady increase in average temperature.