Big storms can leave oyster beds bare and vulnerable to predators. Several of these channels, called atmospheric rivers , dumped particularly heavy storms on California in early 2011. The resulting freshwater influx probably left part of the San Francisco Bay without enough salt for oysters to survive. When there is huge storms that fall into oceans the amount of salt in the oceans decreases. To some organisms this drop of salinity could be deadly. Oysters worldwide have been struggling in recent years because of climate change, ocean acidification and over harvesting. Their disappearance hurts the coastal ecosystems they inhabit. “Oysters build habitat on the coast for other species. They’re kind of like a coral reef in that regard,” says study coauthor Brian Cheng, an ecologist now at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md. Cheng’s team charted the oyster population’s sudden plummet and then gradual rebound over the next few years. Then the researchers examined how water and atmospheric conditions fluctuated over the same time period
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