‘Can’t cope’ How heat is destroying plant and animal life

When forecasts foreshadowed the Pacific north-west’s devastating heatwave at the end of June, marine biologist Christopher Harley was alarmed and intrigued.

Then came the smell, and his feelings somberly shifted.

“It was this putrid smell of decay,” Harley said. Across hundreds of kilometres of coastline the extreme heat baked the barnacles, seaweed, and small sea creatures exposed to the elements along the shore. Starfish were cooked alive. Mussels laid agape along the rocks, crisped between their shells.

Harley and his team of researchers at the University of British Columbia descended to the beaches to measure the body temperatures of the mussels, but it was too late – by the third day of the record-breaking heatwave they all had died. “We were just walking across