In the inter tidal zone walking around it was a solid field of mussels before the heat wave. Maybe 10 underfoot, so say 20 per square foot or 180 per square meter.so 1,000,000,000 mussels would occupy 5,000,000 sq meters of intertidal coast. If the intertidal zone is 5m wide that is 1,000,000 meters of coast, or 1000km.
If all of the mussels and oysters died in 1000km of coastline I’d say it is a significant event.
Edit: a million mussels in the area the size of a tennis court? I was thinking of the clams I was walking on in June … definitely weren’t at that density
There's a chance we'll see increased competition among higher level organisms leading to the depletion of the same low level organisms in adjacent areas until those higher levels have a die off event too allowing them to recover.
It means that climate change is affecting the food supply
Course they probably weren’t living that close to one another.
As for the percent of the total mussel population the article didn’t say.