Effort to stop mysterious illness turning Pacific starfish into goo

Biologists say disease, dubbed sea star wasting syndrome, threatens to drive creatures extinct

NEWPORT, Ore. — In an old industrial warehouse, Tiffany Rudek leaned into a chest-high tank. Using a laminated card, she gently pried a red-speckled sea star from the enclosure’s bright blue walls.

The starfish was reluctant, clinging with its tiny, tubular feet. “It’s delicate to move them,” said Rudek, an aquarist at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Reaching underwater, she unstuck it for its own good.

It was bath time for the sick sea star.

This leather star, like many starfish species, is supposed to have five arms. This one has four. A tuft of pale, spongy tissue is all that is left where its limb came off.

“Sometimes animals need a little help,” she said.

For the past decade, a mysterious illness has spread along the Pacific Coast, causing sea stars — more commonly known as starfish — to literally melt into goo. The outbreak has hit starfish from southern Alaska to Baja California in Mexico, decimating more than a dozen species. The ailment is so pervasive among the invertebrates in the region even specimens in aquariums contract it. Some die within hours of showing symptoms.

No one is sure where the outbreak came from. And no one can agree on what exactly is causing it — whether the source is a virus, bacteria, a change in the environment or something else entirely.

But many biologists are sure of one thing: The disease, dubbed sea star wasting syndrome, threatens to drive some starfish to extinction and hints at deeper problems in Earth’s seas.

Scientists call it the largest known outbreak of any disease among marine animals to date, killing billions of individual sea stars. Now animal handlers at the Oregon Coast Aquarium have developed what they say is a novel treatment for the syndrome, in the hopes of someday rescuing and restoring starfish numbers.

Bending over, Rudek scooped the red-speckled leather star into a clear bucket and swirled an inky concoction meant to kill parasites that prey on its weakened flesh.

Resting on the bottom of the bucket, the star splayed its four remaining limbs against the container’s walls. The disinfected animal, Rudek said, was resting.

“It makes them feel better,” she said. “They’re like, ‘Oh, thank goodness, all of this ick on my body is now gone.’ ”

It sounds like a horror movie. The first symptoms seem mild. A sea star may look a little flattened. Not as puffy as it once was.

Then it will curl up, twisting one arm over another in a vain effort to protect itself from some phantom it cannot see.

As the wasting disease progresses, a sea star develops white, oozing lesions. Its arms detach from its body. In the end, all that is left is a slimy pile of tiny bones and deteriorated flesh.

The outbreak was first identified in 2013 in Washington before scientists spotted melting stars up and down the coast. For a while, the epidemic appeared to spare Oregon. Then in early 2014, a visitor came into the Oregon Coast Aquarium in a panic.

“She said, ‘I need a marine biologist,’ ” recalled Evonne Mochon Collura, a sea jelly specialist and assistant curator of fish and invertebrates. The resident saw a tide pool with a galaxy of gooey stars.

Doug Batson, a diver with the aquarium in Newport, confirmed their worst fears after seeing something akin to a crime scene while diving in the nearby Yaquina Bay that spring. “One arm totally in the middle of nowhere off by itself,” he said. “And another arm a few feet away from that. And then another arm, like a breadcrumb trail.”

At first, the aquarium tried treating its melting starfish with antibiotics. In some cases, the stars bounced back. In others, they got worse. “We were really having mixed success,” Mochon Collura said. “You start looking for something else.”