Starfish Are Still Dying, But Here's Reason for Hope

[David_42]

This is good news. Well, depending on how you look at it.
Starfish Are Still Dying, But Here's Reason for Hope

It's been three years since millions of sea stars from Alaska to Canada and down to Baja, Mexico started wasting away into gooey white mounds. And although the destruction wrought by this disease shows no signs of stopping, the pace of the die-off has slowed.


That's partly because so many sea stars have already died, says Ben Miner, a marine biologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham. Some areas have seen up to a 90 percent decline in their populations. (Read aboutwhy millions of sea stars are 'melting' away.)

Scientists identified the likely culprit last year: A pathogen known as a densovirus, part of the same parvovirus group that can cause gastrointestinal problems in unvaccinated dogs. So they've shifted their efforts to monitoring sea star populations and investigating why this disease—probably caused by a very common ocean virus—is now rampaging through 19 species of sea stars.

 

[waltky]

Starfish making a comeback on US west coast...

Starfish making a comeback on US west coast after illness killed millions
Thu, Dec 28, 2017 - Starfish are making a comeback on the US’ west coast, four years after a mysterious syndrome killed millions of them.

Between 2013 and 2014, Sea Star Wasting Syndrome hit sea stars from British Columbia to Mexico. The starfish would develop lesions and then disintegrate, their arms turning into blobs of goo. The cause is unclear, but researchers said it might be a virus. However, the species is rebounding. Sea stars are being spotted in southern California tide pools and elsewhere, the Orange County Register said on Tuesday. “They are coming back, big time,” Cabrillo Marine Aquarium aquarist Darryl Deleske said. “It’s a huge difference,” Deleske said. “A couple of years ago, you wouldn’t find any. I dove all the way as far as Canada, specifically looking for sea stars and found not a single one.”

Similar die-offs of starfish on the west coast were reported in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, but the latest outbreak was far larger and more widespread, a report by researchers at the University of Santa Cruz said. Beginning with ochre stars off Washington state, the disease spread, killing off mottled stars, leather stars, sunflower stars, rainbows and six-armed stars. It hit southern California by December 2013. “When it did [arrive], you just started to see them melt everywhere,” Deleske said. “You’d see an arm here, an arm there.”

The recovery has been promising. Four adult sea stars, each about 20cm long, were spotted this month at Crystal Cove State Park in Newport Beach. “It’s a treasure we always hope to find,” Crystal Cove Conservancy education coordinator Kaitlin Magliano said. “We lost all of them,” she said. “It’s good to see we have some surviving and thriving. Maybe the next generation will be more resilient.” The stars are not out of danger yet. The wasting syndrome never completely disappeared in northern and central California and it has reappeared in the Salish Sea region of Washington state, a report by the University of Santa Cruz said last month.

Starfish making a comeback on US west coast after illness killed millions - Taipei Times

 

[whitehall]

Starfish are predators on shellfish so maybe it's good news for shellfish. By the way, the story goes back to 2015 but nobody complained back then.

 

[waltky]

Starfish Eating Australia's Great Barrier Reef...

Starfish Eating Australia's Great Barrier Reef Alarm Scientists
January 04, 2018 — A major outbreak of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish has been found munching Australia's world heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, scientists said Friday, prompting the government to begin culling the spiky marine animals.

The predator starfish feeds on corals by spreading its stomach over them and using digestive enzymes to liquefy tissue, and the outbreak hits as the reef is still reeling from two consecutive years of major coral bleaching. "Each starfish eats about its body diameter a night, and so over time that mounts up very significantly," Hugh Sweatman, a senior research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio. "A lot of coral will be lost," he said. That would be a blow for both the ecosystem and the lucrative tourism industry which it supports. The crown-of-thorns starfish were found in plague proportions last month in the Swains Reefs, at the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef, by researchers from the reef's Marine Park Authority, a spokeswoman for the authority told Reuters by phone.

Crown-of-thorns starfish — native predatory coral-feeding starfish which have risen to plague-like levels — are displayed after being removed from the Great Barrier Reef​

The remote reefs, about 200 km (120 miles) offshore from Yeppoon, a holiday and fishing town some 500 km north of Queensland state capital, Brisbane, are well south of the most-visited sections of the Great Barrier Reef, where most culling efforts are focused. But the government's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority already killed some starfish at Swains Reefs in December and will mount another mission this month, a director at the authority, Fred Nucifora, told the ABC. "The complexity with the Swains Reef location is ... they are logistically difficult to access and it is actually quite a hostile environment to work in," Nucifora said.

Previous outbreaks

There have been four major crown-of-thorns outbreaks since the 1960s in the Great Barrier Reef, but it recovered each time because there were always healthy populations of herbivorous fish. The outbreaks are usually triggered by extra nutrients in the water but the reason for the current outbreak was unclear, Sweatman said. The reef is still recovering from damage wrought by the worst-ever coral bleaching on record, which in 2016 killed two-thirds of a 700 km stretch of reef.

A tourist swims on the Great Barrier Reef​

On Friday, a report published in the journal Science found that high ocean temperatures are harming tropical corals much more often than a generation ago, putting reefs under pressure. The Great Barrier Reef, covering 348,000 square kilometers, was World Heritage listed in 1981 as the most extensive and spectacular coral reef ecosystem on the planet, according to the UNESCO website.

Starfish Eating Australia's Great Barrier Reef Alarm Scientists

 

[skookerasbil]

nobody cares