Waters off the coast of Maine vulnerable to changing climate

[jpak]

https://www.pressherald.com/2019/09/15/the-gulf-of-maine-braces-for-the-next-big-ocean-heat-wave/

FREEPORT — From the one-lane bridge over the Little River at low water, you can see men hunched over the mudflats, hundreds of yards from shore, flipping the sea bottom with their pitchfork-like hoes to reveal the clams hiding there.

The clams, the basis of livelihood for generations of diggers from Cape Porpoise to Lubec, are back, at least for now, their numbers slowly recovering from a climate-driven disaster that will almost certainly strike again.

Six years ago, after the Gulf of Maine warmed to unprecedented levels, green crabs flooded over these northern embayments of Casco Bay like a plague of locusts, tearing away seagrass meadows, pockmarking salt marshes with their burrows, and devouring most every mussel and soft-shell clam in their path.

Farther out to sea, puffin chicks starved and right whales abandoned their summer grounds for lack of food. Fishermen began hauling up southern creatures such as black sea bass and Maryland blue crabs. Lobsters shed so early they flooded the market, setting off a chain of events that resulted in angry Canadian lobstermen blockading New Brunswick processing plants to prevent the unloading of lobster trucks from Maine.

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[Backseat Driver]

1. Even more trouble on the way -

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127131983