slides
We model the effects of byssal connections made by mussels within patterned mussel beds on bed stability as a disk graph, and propose a formula for assessing which mussels, if any, would get dislodged from the bed under the impact of a wave. We formulate the computation as a flow problem, giving access to efficient algorithms to evaluate the formula. We then analyse the geometry of the graph, and show that we only need to compute a maximum flow in a restricted part of the graph, giving rise to a near-linear solution in practise.