SEA STARS ARE BACK
After a mysterious die-off …
It was like something out of a seaside horror movie.
Sea stars, once familiar and beautiful and iconic, suddenly had lesions covering their bodies, a sign that something was horribly wrong. Within a day, the stars with lesions started to melt, turning into globs of goo. And, soon after, any sea stars near them suffered the same gruesome fate.
In all, from 2013 to 2014, millions of sea stars died, the largest known Sea Star Wasting Syndrome epidemic on record. The die-off spanned from British Columbia to the shores of Southern California down to Mexico. It was, and is, a mystery.
But now, marine scientists are looking in Southern California tide pools and seeing hope — in the form of millions of new, palm-sized sea stars.
“It’s a huge difference. … 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.” — Darryl Deleske, aquarist for the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium
“They are coming back, big time,” said Darryl Deleske, aquarist for the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro.
“It’s a huge difference. … 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.”
And the same signs are being seen around Southern California, in places like the rocky outcroppings off Crystal Cove State Beach in Orange County, the breakwalls in Long Beach and the coves of Rancho Palos Verdes.
A team at UC Santa Cruz are believed to be the foremost experts on the latest Sea Star Wasting Disease, documenting early die-offs and charting where the disease spread.
According to the researchers, it’s not the first time the mysterious wasting syndrome has hit the West Coast. There were similar die-offs in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s “but never before at this magnitude and over such a wide geographic area,” reads a report by the UC Santa Cruz Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department.
It was first seen in a group of ochre stars during a monitoring survey in June 2013 along the coast of Washington state. Over the next few months it spread.
After the ochre stars, other species started melting — the mottled star, leather stars, sunflower stars, rainbows and sixarmed stars. In August 2013, divers saw a massive die-off of sunflower stars north of Vancouver, British Columbia. In October and November that year, a similar mass death occurred in Monterrey, California, then in Seattle. By December 2013, the wasting disease hit Southern California.
“When it did (arrive), you just started to see them melt everywhere,” Deleske said.
“You’d see an arm here, an arm there.”
“It’s a treasure we always hope to find,’ she said.
During an outing in early December, just south of the historic cottages at Crystal Cove State Park, Magliano spotted four stars; “huge, adult ones” she said, about 7 to 8 inches long. They’re the biggest stars she’s seen since before the wasting syndrome hit.
“Post sea star wasting, 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,” she added.
On an average dive along the Long Beach or Los Angeles break walls, Deleske will see anywhere from 20 to 25 sea stars, most in the 10- to 12-inch range. He’s seeing mostly ochre stars; the knobby stars and the bat stars also are coming back, but he’s not yet seen any sign of the pink stars or sunflower stars.
The wasting also hit Cabrillo Aquarium’s sea star exhibit. Stars that had reached a size of more than 20 inches — after growing for 25 years or longer — died. Now, there are six small, young stars in the aquarium’s touch tank.
“We had to start over,’ Deleske said. “That was really unfortunate. … Now it’s just going to take another 15 years to get really big like they once were.”
Deleske and researchers say traces of the Sea Star Wasting Syndrome remain in nature, and the stars aren’t completely out of danger.
A Nov. 29 update by UC Santa Cruz documented reports from areas in the Salish Sea region of Washington that the Sea Star Wasting Syndrome had reemerged and is again impacting ochre and mottled stars.
Elsewhere, including in waters of British Columbia and north and central California, the disease has persisted at a low level, according to the report.
Two months ago, researchers at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium started to experiment with treating some sick stars with antibiotics, leaving others to fight disease naturally. The treated stars seemed to fare better, offering some hope.
“They don’t seem to be dying like they used to,” Deleske said. “We’ve seen some good results.”
WANT TO SEE SEA STARS?
Winter months offer the lowest tides of the year and low crowds, a good time to explore tide pools. But don’t forget tide pool etiquette and never pick up, move, poke or prod organisms in tide pools. Nothing can be taken, including animals, rocks and shells, from Marine Protected Areas like Crystal Cove or Laguna Beach.
The Crystal Cove Conservancy will offer a tide pool walk with a guide to Pelican Point at 1 p.m. on Saturday, when there will be a low -0.8 tide. Meet at the Pelican Point parking lot No. 2, at the top of the boardwalk near the parking lot. Parking is $15. More info: crystalcove.org.