Tijuana River mussel heart rate estimates 2025-02 to 2025-04

Groups of Mytilus galloprovincialis mussels obtained from the Tijuana River Estuary at the Boca Rio site were outfitted with a MAX30101 pulse oximeter, glued to the exterior of the shell near the shell valve margin, in order to record opening movement of the heart using reflected infrared light. A floating mooring was deployed at the Boca Rio site on 2025-02-25 near the center of the channel. A group of mussels was suspended from the line near the channel bottom, approximately 50 cm above the benthos. Heart movement was recorded, and those raw values were subsequently converted into an estimate of heart rate in beats per minute. The deployment ended on 2025-04-30. Most of the mussels died during the course of the deployment, so data collected after death have been converted to NA values during the quality-checking process.