What 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
Two 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
If 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.
