Bon Appétit: New Zealand surfers treated to a free feast of “moules-frites” as 500,000 mussels cooked to death on hot beach! – BeachGrit

Haute cuisine!

To my eyes, climate change is like a glass half filled. Oh, I know the trendy take is to call that same glass half empty and bemoan the various troubles, calamities, signs of the apocalypse etc. but where is the anti-depression in that?

No, climate change is a gift, a beautiful bounty and some lucky New Zealand surfers were just feted at a Michelin-starred beach with a mega-serving of  moules-frites as 500,000 mussels became cooked to death on a beach thanks increasing ocean temperatures and hotter skies.

Shall we fasten our bibs around our necks and travel there ourselves, digitally? I can almost smell that delicate white wine sauce now.

New Zealand resident Brandon Ferguson posted a video on Facebook from Maunganui Bluff Beach, located on the country’s North Island, showing hundreds-of-thousands of dead mussels that had washed up on the shore.

“I’m local to the area so I’m always out on ‘the coast’ gathering food for the family,” he said. “That day I was out with friends and family while they were fishing. We waited for the tide to turn so we could gather mussels.”

But instead, Ferguson saw hundreds of thousands of green-lipped mussels that had turned up dead.

“It smelled like dead rotting seafood,” Ferguson said. “Some of the mussels were empty, some of them were dead … Some were just floating around in the tide.”

“There were well over 500,000 mussels and shells littering the coastline.”

A 2019 report from the New Zealand government supports Ferguson’s theory — climate change has been warming sea temperatures, devastating the country’s native marine plants, animals and habitats.

World going to hell etc. but, really, my problem here is Mr. Ferguson criticized nature’s effort at a difficult Belgian classic with the whole “smelled like dead and rotting seafood” line. I imagine that he was poorly raised and never learned the “if you don’t have anything nice to say…” good manners.

In another note, one-time professional surfer Carissa Moore credits moules-frites for helping her “surf like a goddess.”

Small world.