Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adiminstration announced last week that the nasty crab infestation that had been chewing and scratching their way through the bottom of the frigid waterway has been largely taken care of, with the team finding that “Marine heatwaves, a component of our impact on the Earth’s climate, can bring both expected and unexpected environmental change. Between 2018 and 2021, after a period of historically high crab abundance and a series of marine heatwaves, the population of snow crab in the Bering Sea declined by 10 billion. [The team] used survey data to model the potential drivers of the decline in this ecologically and commercially important species. They found that the temperature of the water was not above the species’ thermal limits, but it did increase their caloric needs considerably. This increase, in conjunction with a restriction in range, led to an unexpected mass starvation event.”
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