The extreme heatwave baked sea creatures in their shells in Western Canada [View all]

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The devastating heat wave that ravaged British Columbia last week is being blamed for a massive die-off of mussels, clams and other marine animals that live on the beaches of Western Canada.

Christopher Harley, a professor in the zoology department at The University of British Columbia, found countless dead mussels popped open and rotting in their shells on Sunday at Kitsilano Beach, which is a few blocks away from his Vancouver home.

Harley studies the effects of climate change on the ecology of rocky shores where clams, mussels and sea stars live, so he wanted to see how the intertidal invertebrates were faring in the record heat wave that hit the area on June 26-28.

"I could smell that beach before I got to it, because there was already a lot of dead animals from the previous day, which was not the hottest of three," he said. "I started having a look around just on my local beach and thought, 'Oh, this, this can't be good.'"

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Mussels attach themselves to rocks and other surfaces and are used to being exposed to the air and sunlight during low tide, Harley said, but they generally can't survive temperatures over 100 degrees for very long.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/the-extreme-heatwave-baked-sea-creatures-in-their-shells-in-western-canada/ar-AALZHez