"LA CORONILLA, Uruguay — The day the yellow clams turned black is seared in Ramón Agüero’s memory.

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."

Chris Mooney and John Muyskens report for the Washington Post with photos and videos by Carolyn Van Houten September 11, 2019. [2]

SEE ALSO:

"Uruguay's Clam Die-Off Is A Vivid Sign Of Global Warming's Ripple Effects" (Washington Post) [3]

"Six Takeaways From The Post’s Analysis Of The Globe’s Fastest-Warming Areas" (Washington Post) [4]