SAVING THE SEA STARS IN A GARAGE
A retired environmental engineer living in Pebble Beach has converted his garage into a mini aquaculturist lab, hoping to help bring back a voracious predator that once roamed the oceans of the West Coast — the sunflower sea star.
“This is a long-term project we're starting from nothing, with very little funding, and we're basically in my garage,” said Vincent Christian, who is serving as the laboratory manager for Sunflower Star Laboratory, a nonprofit.
A decade ago, a mysterious wasting disease, the largest marine epidemic ever observed, caused dozens of sea star species to melt and disintegrate in the waters from Baja California to Alaska.
One of the species to be hit the hardest was the sunflower sea star, Pycnopodia helianthoides, one of the largest sea star species.
The sunflower sea star or sunflower star — a 16-24 armed sea star that spans 3 feet across and moves at a whopping 4 ½ feet every minute — was once a common sight diving or tide-pooling along the West Coast.
“They're beautiful animals. And rather than having just the regular five arms, they have, like, 24 arms,” said Christian. “They're just a cool animal.
And they were once really common. You'd see them every dive.”
Christian says it is unfortunate that newer divers and younger people haven't had the chance to see them.
“I didn't really appreciate them when they were here,” said Christian. “Once they were gone, then I realized what I missed.”
From 2017-2022, researchers estimated that 5.75 billion sunflower stars, over 90% of the species died from the sea star wasting disease and are considered functionally extinct in California — the species no longer plays a role in the state's ecosystem and there aren't enough of them to be a viable population.
“Along the entire west coast of North America, sunflower stars helped keep urchin populations in check,” said Alison Young, who codirects the Center for Biodiversity and Community Science at the California Academy of Sciences. “Especially in places where we don't have sea otters anymore because sea otters are also big urchin predators.”
Giant Kelp is one of the fastest growing organisms on the planet, growing up to 10-12 inches a day, and is a staple for the California coast marine ecosystem.
Like the towering redwood trees that line our coast, the kelp forest is the base and support of the ecosystem.
But the increasing purple urchin population has been gnawing away at this forest with the disappearance of the sunflower star.
Since 2014, Northern California has lost 95% of its kelp canopy.
In late 2021, Christian converted his garage into a laboratory with tanks, microscopes, and even an area to culture algae to feed the animals in the hope of oneday captive raising sunflower sea stars to be reintroduced into the wild.
Since then, the lab has been working closely with the Pycnopodia Recovery Working Group — a collaboration with the Nature Conservancy, National Marine Fisheries Service, and state agencies and researchers along the West Coast — who created the “Roadmap for Recovery for the Sunflower Sea Star,” to accelerate the recovery of the species.
In December, the Sunflower Star Laboratory cele
brated its first anniversary. Christian opened his home and garage to divers and researchers from the Monterey Bay area to celebrate the progress within the last year.
“The Sunflower Star Lab is a great proof of concept lab,” said Ashley Kidd, the conservation aquaculture manager for the Sunflower Star Lab. “It can be affordably done, just based on the knowledge of the people that are now in the Pycnopodia Recovery Working Group.”
With the focus on sea stars and sunflower stars in particular, scientists have been able to better understand their life cycle, genetics and their ecological role.
“There's just a lot of unanswered questions that are literally being answered on a daily basis,” said Kidd. “We're understanding more about sunflower sea stars every day.”
The roadmap contains seven actions and steps to recover the sunflower star. Some of the steps include more research into Sea Star Wasting Disease, monitoring the current sunflower star population, and raising sunflower stars in captivity with the hope of releasing them into the wild.
“There are lots of examples of animals that had been raised, reared in captivity, and then re-released in the wild,” said Young. “Think about the recovery story of condors along the California coast. We basically had to take the remaining of the small remaining population that was left in the wild and bring them all into zoos and then re-release them back into the wild again.”
In December, the Cal Academy hosted “Solstice Sea Star Search” during king tides at Pillar Point in San Mateo County in a search for sea star species that were affected by the wasting disease.
“Some folks have found Pisaster giganteus, the giant sea star,” said Young. “These giant stars have really cool little purple nubbins all over them. They were hit hard by the disease and haven't recovered nearly as well as other stars.”
Young encourages people to report any sightings of any species that have been affected by the disease and to send in their observations through iNaturalist (https:// www.inaturalist.org), where people can participate in community science by recording their observations of plants and animals.
Earlier in January, an observation of a sunflower star was posted on iNaturalist, north of Eureka.
Some zoos and aquariums across the United States are planning to raise sunflower stars in the upcoming years to be a part of the recovery of the sunflower star.
At the sunflower lab, Christian is currently in Phase 1 out of five phases, raising sand dollars.
“We're not starting directly with sunflower stars. We're starting with other related animals called echinoderms,” said Christian.
Echinoderms are a phylum of animals to which sea stars, urchins, and sand dollars belong.
“We're going to grow those first because they're easier to grow, and we can get specimens locally. And then once we've developed our methods for growing echinoderms, we will try to get larvae from aquariums or out of state to grow sunflower stars.”
Friday Harbor Laboratories from the University of Washington is one of the only laboratories raising sunflower stars from larvae.
With Phase 1, the lab will test its equipment and methodologies with abundant local species, starting with sand dollars.
“Each phase, we'll learn more, get better with our methods, and get more experience,” said Christian. “I'm thinking in maybe two years; we'll probably be ready for sunflower stars.
“We're not doing this by ourselves. We're a collaborative effort with scientists all over the country.”