WE DID THIS

AS THE IMPACTS OF GLOBAL WARMING BECOME INCREASINGLY EVIDENT, THE CONNECTIONS TO BIODIVERSITY LOSS ARE HARD TO IGNORE. CAN THIS FALL’S TWO KEY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES POINT US TO A NATURE-POSITIVE FUTURE?

- LESLIE ANTHONY

On Sunday, June 27, 2021, Chris Harley, a lanky professor of marine ecology at the University of British Columbia, descended a steep concrete stairway in Vancouver’s tony Point Grey neighborhood to a secluded, rock-strewn shoreline navigable only at low tide. The intertidal zone here is like a fast food joint for myriad birds, insects and crabs that feast as the water ebbs, but the sandstone slabs they pick over also serve a more prosaic purpose: a substrate for dense beds of mussels, barnacles, and seaweed, which, in turn, provide habitat for a riot of creatures.

For Harley, who studies how animal distributions are shifting as the climate changes, it’s a perfect site for student-run experiments: local and accessible, with large tides exposing a range of organisms to climate-driven ocean acidification, salinity fluctuations, and rising air temperatures. This particular week, one of the lowest tides of the year coincided with an unprecedented heatwave, and so, despite the north facing spot being somewhat buffered by the cool North Pacific, Harley anticipated at least some effects of the hot weather. What he encountered, however, was haunting.

“The smell was overwhelming,” he says, “so I knew there’d been a significant mortality event. Still, the magnitude was a shock.”