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elevated in all areas in Europe where eelgrass declined because of local 

 climactic variations (Bulthius, 1987). The recent losses to disease in 

 Great South Bay, New Hampshire during the 1980's (Short, 1985) were not 

 associated with elevated temperatures, and again suggests that 

 temperature elevation cannot be the sole explanation for disease 

 outbreaks. 



The observation that some beds offshore in Buzzards Bay survived 

 the wasting disease does support the temperature hypothesis because beds 

 in deeper water are insulated from the extreme temperature that occur in 

 some shallow embayments. For example, in summer, shallow areas may be 

 as much as 10 °C higher than temperatures recorded in well flushed areas 

 (pers. obser., Allee, 1923a). This phenomenon may not be the sole 

 reason for bed survival because some shallow beds along shore, not near 

 freshwater sources, survived or quickly recolonized as well. 



Temperature and climactic conditions in Massachusetts during the 

 early 1930's have not been critically analyzed. Were water temperatures 

 in Buzzards Bay high during the early 1930s as observed elsewhere? 

 Water temperature in shallow coastal waters correlates with air 

 temperature. In eastern North America, mean winter temperatures cycle 

 every twenty years (Mock and Hibler, 1976). This short-term oscillation 

 is superimposed on a one hundred cycle of winter temperature 

 oscillation, and the coincidence of peaks and nadirs of these cycles 

 resulted in the warmest winter ever recorded in the east north central 

 US during 1931-32 (October - March mean = 3.7 °C) , and the coldest in 

 1977-78 (October - March mean = -1.4 °C; Diaz and Quayle, 1978). Air 

 temperature data for Boston show that both that the summers of 1931 and 



