Aquamarine/Nanna K's Day

By NannaK

Sea Stars in Big Trouble!

Low tide on the beach - we are looking for sea stars (Nik is way out there - he says he’s looking at a geoduck) There are shockingly few sea stars this time and most of them have disintegrated with the wasting disease that began off the coast of Washington last summer. We read all about it, and last fall it seemed that we had less stars that are usually abundant on our pilings and beach. I thought they then recovered as we have documented lots of them in march and april here —In May not so many and now in June they are gone again!! Here are 2 examples of how they lose their arms and also just turn to muck. It seems to be either a bacterium or more likely a virus that they perhaps ingest from eating mussels or other shellfish. And it seems to be linked with the warmer water of summer. Here’s a link with a short movie from nearby Orcas Island and lots more information about history (there have been other epidemics down the coast in California in the years with El Nino with the warmer seas but the stars have recovered.) There are organizations that are trying to document which areas are affected which I will write to with my depressing photos.
These kids are asking questions I can't answer. What can we do to save them? What will happen to everything else? Are they going to be extinct?

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