7-3-12 Barnacle decline - McDonald Spit, Alaska, USA
OBSERVATION: The fauna on the inter-tidal rocks seems to have decreased, at least in some areas. In particular the barnacles. A lot of the large barnacle shells are empty. You can also see where many of the skeletons of the barnacles have come off the rocks and their debris in the tide pools. We do not harvest here but we enjoy tide pooling and are concerned and curious what caused this change. Is this the result of winter cold and storms, or an indicator of some kind of unusual change? What happens to the diversity of inter-tidal species when these big mussels are lost? Mike Brubaker
LEO COMMENT: (2012-08-15) See article published in Wired.
Observations From Members 