Low tides go out a bit earlier amid heat wave, endangering fewer shellfish
Some potentially welcome news for shellfish and their fans: While Puget Sound is having fairly low tides this week, exposing tidepool life to extreme heat, they're mostly morning lows — before the worst heat of the day — at least in Seattle and central Puget Sound.
Low tides are predicted between about 10:15 a.m. and noon this week in Seattle, according to tidal forecasts by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In south Puget Sound, the tides will go out about an hour later, as late as a 1:07 p.m. low tide on Friday in Olympia.
Last year, extreme heat and very low afternoon tides combined to kill many millions of shellfish in Washington and British Columbia.
“All the butter clams in that one section had unburied themselves and were basically frying in the sun,” Swinomish Tribe shellfish biologist Julie Barber recalled. “It's not an easy thing to see.”
Low tides during last year’s three-day heatwave hit between 1 and 3 p.m. in Olympia. The tides ebbed up to 2.5 feet lower than those forecast for this week, exposing many more tidelands to lethal heat.
In addition, this week’s temperatures in Western Washington, while extreme, are not expected to match the record-shattering temperatures of the 2021 heat wave.
University of British Columbia biologist Chris Harley estimated that hundreds of millions of mussels, if not more, died in the June 2021 heat wave in Washington and British Columbia.
“The total number of animals that died is probably well over a billion,” he told KUOW last year.
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John Ryan
Environment Reporter
John Ryan joined KUOW as its first full-time investigative reporter in 2009 and became its environment reporter in 2018. He focuses on climate change, energy, and the ecosystems of the Puget Sound region.
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