Aaaaannnnd, the bacteria thrives because of warming ocean temps, which aren't going down anytime soon
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And I would've gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you meddling kids!
They got hit with the starfish version of the Black Death, except worse. Seems like evolution should sort this quickly. The few survivors should be immune, but I have no idea how long it takes for them to reproduce.
Had no idea how voracious those little fuckers are! If sea urchins are now an issue, maybe we should start scarfing them down? LOL, we do that in Florida with invasive lionfish. Divers are legally "weapons free" on those beasts and compete to see how many they can harpoon and bring back to restaurants.
I remember watching a short documentary about lionfish hunting, and iirc they turned to allow hunting after they weren't able to teach sharks to eat them. They only succeeded in teaching the sharks that if they harass a diver, there might be a tasty lionfish treat.
It's the bacterium Vibrio pectenicida, of the same family as Vibrio cholerae. Humans only exacerbated this by rising temperatures but it wasn't us directly.
But what caused the bacteria to bloom and thrive?
My guess would be climate change.
You're just saying that because it's probable
That was also my guess, but these creatures live(d) all up and down the Pacific coast, over a much wider range of climates than the 1.5°C change so far.
It’s about optimal conditions. Did the equilibrium move towards the peak of their temperature tolerance, even a bit? That sort of thing can cause a population explosion.
Another aspect related to climate change could be ocean acidification. Excess CO2 in the atmosphere is pushing ocean pH down, and a slightly acidic environment might be more favorable.
Yeah, that's caused by increased CO2 levels and not by the heating itself, so it is a reasonable hypotheses even given the wildly varying temperatures where this is happening.
Its already known too that CO2/ocean acidification impacts the ability of shellfish to make their shells. Calcium carbonate doesn’t form very well in a more acidic environment, and I could see issues with shell formation/weakened shells leading to a vulnerability to bacteria.
Interestingly, a warmer ocean will be able to hold less CO2. Considering that the ocean is the one of the worlds biggest carbon sinks, acidification might be cancelled out by the positive feedback loop of the oxygen releasing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as it warms. Yikes.
But where? If the amount of heating caused these bacteria to spring to life off Washington, then why weren't they already a problem off Southern California, which is much more than one climate change warmer, or somewhere in between?
Sure, it can somehow lead back to climate change, or to us in some other way, but it's not just that it's a bit warmer now.
True but it's also not that simple either. Climate change includes things like random mutations of bacteria or viruses. And it may not just be climate change, it could be that microplastics lower their autoimmune abilities. It's the omni-crisis. We have SO MANY ways our civilization could die. And with that, most of our species. So, so many. And as one worsens, the other gets more tense. Like Jenga or dominoes. Not the game, but the shitty pizza chain (cheap shot, I know). I mean PFAs, microplastics, nano plastics, temperature and climate change, rising sea levels, acidification, the mental damages due to additional CO2 and heat, any one of these could take down civilization, and I know I'm missing some, like the rising threat of fascism. But all of these issues are coming up all at once, and many of them are interwined. But almost all of them tie back to the industrial revolution.
The answer is people peeing in the ocean. Just an hypothesis.
Probably a Tik Tok challenge about peeing in the sea. You know standard tom foolery.
The culprit? Bacteria that has also infected shellfish - Vibrio pectenicida
it was me
The sea killed the sea stars.
How do I know that?
Because radio killed the radio stars. It must be the same phenomenon.


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