Honolulu Star-Advertiser © Susan Scott
December 23, 2013
One of my favorite activities during visits to the Puget Sound area is starfish gazing. At the ferry docks I’m in awe of the orange, purple and red starfish sprawled on the pilings like so many ornaments, and at my husband’s family cabin on Orcas Island, I’m the first to don rubber boots at low tide and splash out on a sea star trek.
Now, sadly, starfish (aka sea stars) are in trouble, and not just in Washington state. From Southern California to Alaska, sea stars of several species are dying by the thousands from a disease called wasting syndrome. No one knows the cause of the mysterious ailment, but the stakes are high. Starfish play a key role in the health of Pacific rocky intertidal zones.
Scientists are hard at work looking for answers, a massive job given the range involved. A key element is mapping the areas affected, a project that requires information gathered from researchers and lay people alike. You can see the affected areas at data.piscoweb.org/marine1/seastardisease.
Wasting disease has not affected Hawaii’s starfish. Because a bacterium or virus is the suspected cause of the starfish illness, being more than 2,000 miles away from the sick individuals seems to be, so far, an effective quarantine.
In addition to being isolated by distance, Hawaii’s mountaintop islands and steep ocean drop-offs offer starfish few shallow marine environments, the preferred habitat of many species. Of the 1,900 or so sea star species in the world, Hawaii hosts only 20 in shallow water and 68 in deep water.
In Hawaii, snorkelers and divers see starfish, but not during every excursion and never by the dozens. Finding a star here is a treat that for me is always worth a stop.
If you pick up a starfish, it’s common to see thousands of the creature’s yellowish, water-filled tube feet, tipped with suckers, extending from grooves on the animal’s underside. You might also see a tan, jellylike mass at the center of the radiating arms. This is the creature’s stomach, turned inside out to digest its meal of a live animal, or the remains of one.
But look fast. A disturbed star quickly pulls its feet and stomach back inside its protective skin, embedded with moveable calcium carbonate rods and plates. (Please return all admired sea stars to the spot you found them, belly side down. The creatures can walk, and even turn themselves over, but it’s slow going and energy-intensive.)
If there’s hope for any beleaguered class of marine animals to make it through a crisis, though, it’s these classic symbols of the sea. Starfish have remarkable powers of regeneration. In addition to releasing sperm and eggs into the water to make new starfish, an adult star can regrow a lost arm, and in some species a detached arm can grow into a complete new starfish.
It’s hard to picture Puget Sound without sea stars hugging the pilings and festooning the tide flats. But with dozens of private and public organizations and individuals teaming up to help researchers on both coasts map and study wasting syndrome, and sea stars’ doing their part with their remarkable powers of regeneration, let’s hope we won’t have to.