It’s not just gulls and sea snails that suffer. Yet marine heat waves can “inject a lot of chaos,” said Chris Free, a fisheries scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Just a deep-red splotch on a scientist’s map telling everyone it’s hot out there, and perhaps a photo of birds washed up on a faraway beach to prove it. There’s no melting asphalt, no straining electrical grids, no sweating through shirts.

What happens on the 70 percent of the planet covered by saltwater is mostly out of sight. A heat wave in the ocean is not like one on land. Over the course of two years, 1 million seabirds died, kelp forests withered, and sea lion pups got stranded.īut you could have easily missed it.

The sprawling patch of unusually tepid water in the Gulf of Alaska grew, and grew some more, until it covered an area about the size of the continental United States.

Scientists first spotted the Blob in late 2013. This story is part of Record High, a Grist series examining extreme heat and its impact on how - and where - we live.

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