LA CORONILLA, Uruguay — The day the yellow clams turned black is seared in Ramón Agüero’s memory.
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| An empty yellow clamshell rests on the beach in Barra del Chuy, Uruguay. Clam harvests have plunged 95 percent from the peak of 220 tons in 1985 as ocean temperatures have warmed. |
It was the summer of 1994. A few days earlier, he had collected a generous haul, 20 buckets of the thin-shelled, cold-water clams, which burrow a foot deep into the sand along a 13-mile stretch of beach near Barra del Chuy, just south of the Brazilian border. Agüero had been digging up these clams since childhood, a livelihood passed on for generations along these shores.
But on this day, Agüero returned to find a disastrous sight: the beach covered in dead clams.
Read the story from The Washington Post by Chris Mooney and John Muyskens - “Dangerous new hot zones are spreading around the world.”
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