welcome back to wine and winds i'm your host kp a marine biologist up here in the pacific northwest
if you pay attention to the news then you might have heard we've just experienced an
unprecedented heat wave i got a lot of questions both on twitch and discord about how animals stay
cool when it's so dang hot so i thought that would be the topic of this week's currently
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typically marine mammals struggle to keep warm not cool especially up here in the pacific northwest
where water temperatures are going to range around 9 to 10 degrees celsius
or 50 degrees fahrenheit and it's even colder near the poles and that's why most mammals like
seals and sea lions or even whales have very thick layers of blubber that help keep them warm
before i go further i should probably warn you this might be a little bit of a heavier episode
because the hard truth is that climate change is here it's upon us
and it's a very serious threat with devastating consequences and implications
that we're already seeing in the wild but my intention is also not to weigh you down
and ruin your day so as usual i promise there will be cute clips of animals sprinkled throughout
so let's start here with sea otters
sea otters are really unique to this environment because they're the only marine mammal that
doesn't rely on a heavy layer of blubber to keep warm they only have around two percent body fat
so instead they have the densest fur coat in the animal kingdom
and a metabolism that's two to three times that of a similar sized land mammal
their metabolism is so high that you can often see steam
rising from their bodies even in the summertime as we see here with a sea otter named kunik
but what happens when the air temperatures break 40 degrees celsius
like they did here in bc just a few weeks ago
for the animals under human care thankfully the water is still very cool in their habitats
but we also like to give them their favorite toy of all time ice that is a very full turtle pool
sea otters love ice they like to eat ice they like to roll in ice
everybody has a different playing style they even use ice in the same way that
their wild cousins might use a rock banging it against things trying to get at what's inside
speaking of their wild cousins how did they stay cool
out here with no trainers to provide them with ice
well they probably just stayed in the water the whole time
some wild sea otters will spend their entire lives out to sea never setting foot on land
but not all marine life is capable of staying in the water mussels clams and other bivalves are
usually found attached to rocks or piers here in intertidal zones they can spend four to six hours
exposed to the sun during low tide but in that unprecedented heat wave they were sadly cooked
alive scientists originally estimated that about 1 billion animals usually
mussels died during that heat wave but marine biologists now worry that the actual count
is far higher this is a catastrophic event that will have a ripple effect
through the ecosystem mussels clams and oysters are a significant food source
not just for sea otters but for dozens of sea birds like gulls and herons
and it's not just the disruption of the food chain that has scientists worried
bivalves like these are also filter feeders they keep the oceans clean a single mussel
can filter 38 liters of water in a single day that's about 10 gallons
oysters are even more prolific water filters a single oyster can filter 5 liters
in an hour that's 30 gallons of ocean water a day so we're talking about potentially 20 billion
gallons of ocean water going unfiltered every day because of the heat wave
that's hundreds of billions of gallons a year maybe even trillions it's a number so
astronomically large that i can't even wrap my head around it in our very first deeper dive
shame was plugged to this video right up here we talked about how sea otters are a keystone
species for the environment that they live in but bivalves are just as important to the ecosystem
so much of the ecosystem depends on muscles in clams that they are what
scientists consider a foundation species because they're the bedrock of ocean life
in an article for npr a biologist from the university of british columbia put it this way
losing a bed of muscles would be like losing all of the apartment buildings in a city core
a link to that article is in the descriptions below
so the question is what happens to an ecosystem when it loses its foundation species
according to that same npr article species will then shift towards the poles and they're doing it
at a rate of about six kilometers a year and while some species like seals or sea
otters will have little trouble adapting to colder climates on the poles that's not the
case for animals like sea turtles sea turtles are reptiles that means they're cold-blooded
that means they depend on external temperatures to regulate their core body temperature
if the water gets too warm they'll migrate to where it's cooler
but if they travel too far north and get stuck there when the temperatures turn
they can quickly suffer from something called cold stun sea turtles become very weak and
lethargic when exposed to cold temperatures and are eventually unable to swim or feed
according to the noaa thousands of sea turtles can be affected by cold stunning events
i think the takeaway here is that everything is connected and one event can have a cascade effect
that we can't even fully predict the good news though the same is true for our actions doing
simple things like turning off the lights when you leave a room or unplugging electronics when
you're not using them taking public transportation and especially being active in public politics
and policy while these little things might seem small and inconsequential they can have a lasting
effect on the environment because the truth is the latest heat wave won't be the last
so let me know in the comments down below the little things you're doing to limit your impact
on the environment don't forget to like subscribe and enjoy a few more clips of
sea otters playing in ice while i try to beat the heat in the shade maybe a beverage or two cheers
they're all mine
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i think that's the zoomies