May 1, 2014 — The reason is sea star wasting syndrome, an outbreak that has resulted in the demise of hundreds of thousands of starfish along the Pacific coastline ranging from Sitka, Alaska, to Mexico’s Coronado Islands.
Jayson Smith scours Crystal Cove’s rocky shoreline for sea stars, or starfish – and the search is getting harder every week.
In October, there were 191 sea stars at this reef, just south of the historic cottages that line the state park’s cliffs. Smith, a marine biologist from Cal Poly Pomona, has been monitoring this site since his graduate student days back in 1996.
In March, there were 11. Saturday, Smith only finds one.
The reason is sea star wasting syndrome, an outbreak that has resulted in the demise of hundreds of thousands of starfish along the Pacific coastline ranging from Sitka, Alaska, to Mexico’s Coronado Islands.
So far, scientists have been unable to pinpoint a cause for the massive die-off, which is the most extensive sea star wasting event on record, extending farther geographically and hitting more species of sea stars than any other occurrence.
The disease started showing up last summer in Washington state, where sea stars began developing lesions, or white marks on their bodies. Once infected, sea stars lose their rigidity, start to discard their limbs and literally pull themselves apart in the course of a few hours. Piles of white ooze often mark the areas a sea star once inhabited.
Read the full story at the Orange County Register