Each July, at each site, the researchers carefully cleaned all of the marine life off a small patch of rock the size of a sidewalk square, then monitored the ecosystem’s recovery as mussels, barnacles, and algae recolonized the rock. Since 2012, Menge and his colleagues have been selectively disturbing six sites on the Oregon coast. “As it turns out, we’re not so sure that’s the case anymore.” “We thought the system was in pretty good shape,” Menge says. But that apparent stability belies the growing chaos of an ecosystem that appears to be heading for collapse. To a beachgoer, the intertidal may seem vibrant, healthy, and unchanging from one year to the next. Strips of lime-green surf grass wave in shallow water. Perched above the mussel beds are tide pools, packed with red and green algae, ghostly white and pink anemones, and purple and orange sea stars bursting with color. The Oregon coast is dotted with colonies of blue-black mussels intermingled with gray gooseneck barnacles. Now, he’s on the West Coast at Oregon State University, watching as Oregon’s rocky intertidal zone approaches disaster. More than half the mussels were gone, largely replaced by algae. In 2014, he revisited those same sites and found, to his alarm, that ocean warming had crashed the ecosystem. In the 1970s, as a marine biologist at the University of Massachusetts, he studied thriving blue mussel populations along the rocky New England coast. Authored byĪp| 950 words, about 4 minutes Share this articleīruce Menge has spent his career trying to detect ecological catastrophes. Photo by Dennis Fraters/Alamy Stock Photo Oregon’s Intertidal Ecosystem Is Approaching a Tipping Point Ecologists are already finding the warning signs-hopefully it’s not too late. This, combined with documented changes in community structure, suggests the ecosystem is approaching a tipping point.
Oregon’s intertidal ecosystems are recovering from disturbance more slowly than they were even a few years ago.
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