Vital (Chesapeake) bay grass can't take heat (bay may die this yr.)

[donsu]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/weather/bal-te.md.eelgrass13may13,0,2918326.story?coll=bal-home-headlines


Experts say the Chesapeake's plant life couldn't stand another summer of temperatures near record highs

From the deck of a motorboat, Mike Naylor plunged a rake into shallow water and came up with nothing but a sliver of dead seaweed the size and color of a burnt match.

A year earlier, a lush forest of green eelgrass swayed beneath the waves of Tangier Sound here in the southern Chesapeake Bay. The plants were a vibrant breeding ground for blue crabs, terrapin, sea horses and pipefish, said Naylor, a biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

-snip-

Some scientists believe global warming contributed to a widespread die-off of eelgrass last summer in a section of the Chesapeake Bay that is the core of the region's crab industry.

-snip-

"If we have another hot summer like last summer, the change in the Chesapeake Bay could be catastrophic," said Robert J. Orth, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. "We are quite concerned that evidence continues to stack up that global warming is having rapid impacts in many areas of the world for animal and plant species, including the eelgrass here."
-snip-
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well, they are going to have another hot summer. expect catastrophy. expect not to eat crabs.

oh how I hate the bushmilhousegang

[SPKrazy]

1. Surely Different Flora And Fauna Will Take Over?

some gawd awful kind

[donsu]

2. who knows - we haven't been on a hot planet before

nt

[Poppyseedman]

3. A decade from now we may have

Chesapeake Bay Gators instead of crabs.

[donsu]

5. gators have to eat something - think food chain

we keep losing links in the chain

[Poppyseedman]

6. Dogs, cats, small children

are like Triple Whopper w/cheese to a gator.

[marions ghost]

4. eelgrass is the key

as it goes, so goes the Bay. The scientists at VA Institute of Marine Science (Coll of Wm & Mary) have been following the decline of the beds for years.