Updated in 2025: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish (sea star wasting syndrome), along North American coastlines, now found off Florida

[Emily]

The populations are exploding for unknown reasons, then they suspect stresses make them susceptible to disease. The syndrome makes them rapidly dissolve.

http://www.timescolonist.com/vancouver-aquarium-alarmed-at-mass-die-off-of-starfish-on-ocean-floor-1.651224

Vancouver Aquarium 'alarmed' at mass die-off of starfish on ocean floor

Dene Moore / The Canadian Press
October 7, 2013 04:00 AM

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

It's moved into Puget Sound's Elliot Bay now. So far there is no evidence other parts of Puget Sound are affected, but the aquarium is asking divers to take photos and report it if they see sick starfish elsewhere.

Biologists search for cause of sea star deaths

by AMY MORENO / KING 5 News
Posted on October 26, 2013 at 6:02 PM

Updated today at 6:01 PM
...
?We often think viral when we think of sea star disease,? Veterinarian Lesanna Lahner explained. ?At this time, we don't have a good idea of what's causing it, so we're going to look for everything.?

Just a few weeks ago, the populations in Puget Sound waters near the aquarium looked healthy. Saturday, biologists were surprised by what they saw.

?There are a lot of melting seas tars out there, more than even a couple days ago? Christiansen said. ?There would be a healthy animal in really close proximity to a sick animal; there was no concentration of sick ones and concentration of good ones.?...

 

[Shiloh]

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/scienc...virus-causing-gruesome-wasting-deaths-110413/

Mysterious Wasting Virus Killing Starfish Along West Coast
November 4, 2013

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com ? Your Universe Online

California marine biologists are reporting the spread of a mysterious virus that is killing starfish up and down the West Coast ? transforming the echinoderms into piles of goo in the process.

?They essentially melt in front of you,? Pete Raimondi, a biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told The Santa Rosa Press Democrat...

 

[Pathfinder]

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Falling Stars: Starfish Dying From ?Disintegrating? Disease

Populations have been decimated in recent months, and scientists are racing to find out why

By Katy Steinmetz / San Francisco
Nov. 05, 2013

When marine researchers from the University of California at Santa Cruz traveled to Alaska this summer, they noticed something unsettling in the waters near Sitka: populations of starfish were losing their arms. Then other reports started pouring in to their laboratory: from Southern California to British Columbia, uncounted numbers of one of America?s best known sea species appeared to be disintegrating.

It?s normal for a tiny portion of starfish populations to suffer from so-called ?wasting syndrome.? If the creatures? skin is wounded or becomes too dry, little lesions can become infected and lead to the loss of arms. But the disease is typically isolated to one or two starfish among hundreds in a rocky tide pool. And even in bad cases, it rarely stretches beyond a single population. ?The spatial extent is unprecedented,? says Pete Raimondi, chair of the ecology and evolutionary biology department at UC Santa Cruz, which monitors starfish populations on the West Coast. ?If it?s as extensive as it looks like it is, then we?re talking about a loss of millions and millions.?

...Though starfish generally have the ability to grow new arms, in these cases wounds don?t heal and innards become exposed as the animal falls apart.

So what gives? It could be environmental factors, a virus, bacteria or some combination. Wasting syndrome actually describes a whole set of symptoms without a universal cause. When other outbreaks struck the West Coast in recent decades, scientists identified warm water as the likely culprit. Starfish are primarily cooler water species, so when the water heats up, it compromises their health, making them more susceptible to infected wounds, Raimondi says. Bacteria also divide faster in warmer temperatures, meaning disease can spread more quickly. But the West Coast has been in a cold-water period. ?Right now, we don?t really have a culprit,? Raimondi says.

...
http://science.time.com/2013/11/05/...ng-from-disintegrating-disease/#ixzz2jrdqJLyo

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Bacteria also divide faster in warmer temperatures, meaning disease can spread more quickly. But the West Coast has been in a cold-water period.

That's very interesting, Pathfinder!

 

[Tonka]

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

http://www.mednscience.org/sites/de...ckert_Sea_Star_Disease_Population_Decline.pdf

SEA STAR DISEASE AND POPULATION DECLINES AT THE CHANNEL ISLANDS

In the summer of 1997 we quantified the incidence of wasting disease among multiple species of stars...disease observed since 1978...

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Hawaii's starfish protected from fatal wasting disease

Oregon coast isolated from mysterious West Coast starfish die-off, but scientists warn problems could come

Oregon and Hawaii's coastal waters may be less influenced by shipping, industrial activity, and military testing than the affected areas, so perhaps toxic exposures play a part in this.

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

http://www.mednscience.org/sites/de...ckert_Sea_Star_Disease_Population_Decline.pdf

SEA STAR DISEASE AND POPULATION DECLINES AT THE CHANNEL ISLANDS

In the summer of 1997 we quantified the incidence of wasting disease among multiple species of stars...disease observed since 1978...

Thanks for finding a full text article on this topic, Tonka. :tiphat: Something notable about the current mass mortality is that we are not in an ocean warming period as was the case in the previous episodes.

One severe case of
sea star wasting disease was noted in Heliaster kubiniji, in
the Gulf of California in 1978 (Dungan et al. 1982). The
species was virtually eliminated by the disease, and to date,
recovery has not occurred at some sites in the Gulf of California
where it used to be abundant (D. Thomson, pers.
comm.)

...
Sea temperature data from the Scripps Pier since 1920
indicate that a long-term warming trend has occurred in
southern California from 1976 to 1998. Initial appearance
of sea star wasting disease occurred two years after the start
of the warming trend and has been noted periodically since
then (Channel Islands National Park Annual Reports; Engle,
unpublished data). There apparently is a relationship between
increased seawater temperature and incidence of the disease
in the Channel Islands (Eckert, in prep). Sea star wasting
disease has not been limited to southern California. In
fact, Menge (1979) describes a similar kind of wasting disease
in 1972 in the sea star Asterias vulgaris in Maine. It is
interesting that the 1978 observation of sea star wasting disease
in the Gulf of California (Dungan et al. 1982) coincided
with observations of the disease in southern California
(Engle, unpublished data). The etiologic agent responsible
for the disease has been preliminarily identified as a
Vibrio bacteria (Schroeter et al., unpublished manuscript;
Crowell, pers. comm.). One preliminary conclusion is that
extended warming periods compromise the immune system
(Crowell, pers. comm.). Sea stars can recover from the disease
if put into cold water, and death has been noted within
seven days of onset of the disease (Engle, unpublished data).

So why this dramatic die-off started in 2013 when we are not in a warming period is quite a mystery.

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease (viral) suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525

Climate change: The case of the missing heat
Sixteen years into the mysterious ?global-warming hiatus?, scientists are piecing together an explanation.

Jeff Tollefson
15 January 2014

...

Blowing hot and cold

Just before the hiatus took hold, that region had turned unusually warm during the El Ni?o of 1997?98, which fuelled extreme weather across the planet, from floods in Chile and California to droughts and wildfires in Mexico and Indonesia. But it ended just as quickly as it had begun, and by late 1998 cold waters ? a mark of El Ni?o?s sister effect, La Ni?a ? had returned to the eastern equatorial Pacific with a vengeance. More importantly, the entire eastern Pacific flipped into a cool state that has continued more or less to this day.

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20140219/NEWS01/140219006/Sea-stars-vanishing

Published: Wednesday, February 19, 2014, 12:01 a.m.
EMAIL ARTICLE | PRINT | JUMP TO COMMENTS
Mystery illness decimating sea star populations

By Bill Sheets, Herald Writer
MUKILTEO ? It?s an iconic summertime image in the Northwest: children playing on the shoreline at low tide, shoveling sand into plastic pails while purple and orange sea stars cling to exposed rocks nearby.
...

While the evidence so far points to a pathogen, ?that certainly doesn?t preclude the possibility that there are other things in the water that are weakening their immune systems and allowing them to get sick,? Miner said. ?It has the potential to be a combination.?
...

Kimber Chard, of Edmonds, a scuba diver who frequents the waters of Edmonds and Mukilteo, said he began noticing dying sea stars about nine months ago.

Samples are being sent to the Hewson lab at Cornell for investigation.

http://hewsonlab.micro.cornell.edu/home.html

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Sea star wasting disease arrives on Oregon Coast


The story below is from California:
http://thelumberjack.org/2014/04/30/look-but-dont-touch/

Look, but Don?t Touch

Posted by: Diover Duario 22 days ago
By: Nicole Willared

...

All the starfish from HSU?s marine lab invertebrate touch tank were removed last Wednesday because they have a fatal disease, according to Yvonne Kugies, the office manager at the HSU?s marine laboratory.

?All the starfish were taken out of the touch tank,? Kugies said. ?The loss was so significant, they were disintegrating in the tank and Grant had to take measures.?
...
?Whatever it is, we have it in our marine lab system,? Eberle said. ?It?s not getting filtered out by our sand filters. Starfish are one of the easiest creatures to keep alive, they?re practically indestructible.?

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

http://www.lagunabeachindy.com/sea-stars-dying-tide-pools/

By Rita Robinson on February 22nd, 2014
Sea Stars Dying in Tide Pools
...

The culprit is believed to be an infectious microorganism, which appears to be attacking a specific marine species and would not likely affect humans, scientists say. Raimondi said researchers are ?pretty clear? what the infectious agent is but they are unsure of its origin and decline to disclose whether it?s naturally occurring or manmade.

?These guys are epidemiologists and they have a protocol that they follow,? said Raimondi. ?They don?t release anything until they follow the protocol. They?re in the process now of challenging organisms. Once that work is done, they?ll be able to release the information.?...

http://www.tulalipnews.com/wp/2014/05/24/sea-star-wasting-syndrome-perplexes-scientists/

Puyallup Tribe Observes Disease Affecting Sea Stars

E. O?Connell, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

As part of its regular crab population monitoring, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians is tracking the impact of a mysterious ailment that is killing sea stars.

...

?We saw one monitoring site go from four sea stars per pot in April to 12 in September to zero in October,? Stearns said.

When a diseased sea star catches a ride on a tribal crab pot, it deflates quickly. Within a few minutes, a normally rigid sea star will be hanging on the pot like a wet rag.

?Some of the sea stars we are finding are literally melting in front of us,? Stearns said.

Interview with Oregon Coast Aquarium's Jim Burke:

http://ijpr.org/post/scourge-sea-star-wasting-disease

Jefferson Exchange | May 20, 2014 | 8:30 10:10 am
Tue May 20, 2014
The Scourge Of Sea Star Wasting Disease
By Geoffrey Riley & Charlotte Duren

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

http://phys.org/news/2014-06-sea-star-disease-epidemic-surges.html

Sea star disease epidemic surges in Oregon, local extinctions expected
Jun 04, 2014


...

In the past, some of the outbreaks were associated with warm-water conditions during El Nino events, but currently the water temperatures in Oregon "are only at the high end of a normal range," Menge said.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-06-sea-star-disease-epidemic-surges.html#jCp

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

http://www.eeb.ucsc.edu/pacificrockyintertidal/data-products/sea-star-wasting/time-lapse.html
Sea Star Wasting Disease Time Lapse - West Coast

http://data.piscoweb.org/marine1/seastardisease.html
Star Wasting Syndrome Map: Last Updated: 2014-05-09

Professor Studies Disappearing Sea Stars
March 26, 2014 2:02 am
By REEM KHONDAKAR

Since July of last year, sea stars across the East and West Coast have been dying by the hundreds of thousands, according to Prof. Ian Hewson, microbiology. As a result he is investigating whether a water-borne microorganism is behind what has now been coined ?sea star wasting disease.?

...

Previous mass sea star deaths have been correlated to dramatic climatological events, such as El Nino. El Nino is a periodic warming of a band of water in the Pacific Ocean that develops off the coast of South America. In the 1970s El Nino caused a massive upwelling of nutrient rich water which created ideal conditions for several pathogens that killed off sea stars.But, according to Hewson, no climate-related link has been found with the current sea star wasting disease.

...

?Essentially they are sea water, and it is difficult to exclude a lot of bacteria from the analysis because they have it running through their veins, so to speak,? Hewson said.

...

?When HIV first started, the main symptoms that people were turning up with were all manners of weird infections, which were not actually the root of the disease,? Hewson said. ?It took some time to find what the cause was, the HIV virus. We?re dealing with a situation not unlike that.?...

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

http://www.campbellrivermirror.com/news/263518501.html

Wasting syndrome strikes local sea stars
by Paul Rudan - Campbell River Mirror
posted Jun 17, 2014 at 12:00 PM? updated Jun 17, 2014 at 1:44 PM

?Severed arm?another severed arm, it looks like a crime scene,? says Sandra Milligan as she walks the Willow Point Reef.

After apparently avoiding the Campbell River area last year, sea star wasting syndrome is now here and local stars are disappearing at an astonishing rate.

?I walked here last month and those big rocks were loaded with purple sea stars, now there are none...
...
The disease, believed to be caused by bacteria or virus, was first noticed last year in B.C. coastal waters. Then it was seen throughout the Pacific Northwest, but the Campbell River area seemed strangely unaffected...

https://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/dying-starfish-washed-up-sea-lions-and-other-marine-diseases-leave-too-many-questions

Reasons for massive starfish dieoff still unknown


Krista Langlois | Jun 18, 2014 05:00 AM

Here?s some shocking news: Since last fall, when I first wrote about Pacific sea stars falling victim to a mysterious disease, turning into goo and dying, the aptly-named ?starfish wasting syndrome? has not ? as scientists hoped ? subsided on its own. It?s gotten much, much worse.
...
...Though the outbreak has prompted a slew of research and emergency funding from the National Science Foundation, no one really knows. We?re 11 months into an epidemic that could wreak havoc on entire ecosystems from Mexico to Alaska, and we can?t pin down the cause. It?s like the bubonic plague is striking our oceans, and we?re stuck in the dark ages...

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

http://www.kgw.com/news/washington?fId=263745201&fPath=/news/local&fDomain=10212

Sea star epidemic hits Hood Canal
Credit: KING

by GARY CHITTIM / KING 5 News
Posted on June 18, 2014 at 6:39 PM
Updated Wednesday, Jun 18 at 7:10 PM


NEAR HOODSPORT, Wash. -- Diver Laura James hoped Hood Canal might be a corner of Puget Sound that would be spared from the die off of sea stars that has ravaged the entire West Coast.

She lost hope after her latest dive. The underwater walls and floor of the popular Sund Rock diving site are covered with sea stars in various stages of death...

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20140623/NEWS/306239997/peninsula-volunteers-pitching-in-on-sea-star-wasting-disease-research

Peninsula volunteers pitching in on sea star wasting disease research
By Jeremy Schwartz
Peninsula Daily News
The efforts of volunteers across the North Olympic Peninsula have been vital in recent months as scientists work to uncover the secrets of a mysterious affliction eating its way through sea star populations up and down the West Coast.

?Citizen scientists? have braved slippery rocks along the northern coasts of Clallam and Jefferson counties to seek signs of the disease, called sea star wasting syndrome, in the multi-armed creatures that live on the craggy shorelines.
...

?[They have] also persisted through the winter, which we have never seen before, so it's been kind of unusual that way,? Miner said.

Wasting "Zombie" Sea Stars Found in San Diego
A mysterious disease is causing the limbs of some sea star species to fall off and dissolve, according to researchers
By Candice Nguyen
| Sunday, Jun 22, 2014 | Updated 7:08 AM PDT
...
The impacted creatures have also been referred to as "zombie sea stars."

?You would see a trail of arms and [think] 'Oh, this is going to lead me somewhere bad,' and then you keep following the arms. Sure enough there's this zombie sea star,? said UCSB research diver Sarah Sampson who is currently working in the North County. ?You see the arms crawling away.?

Sampson says there are about 11 species of sea stars in the San Diego area and she hasn?t seen about 75 percent of them since last October.

Similar die-offs have occurred before in the 1970s and 1980s but never at this magnitude and across such an widespread region.

According UC Santa Cruz researchers, since April the number of cases increased dramatically in areas including Carlsbad, La Jolla, Mission Bay and Point Loma...

Source: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/loc...und-in-San-Diego-264104921.html#ixzz35a1sagn9

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[Emily]

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

http://www.montereyherald.com/news/ci_26041167/monterey-bay-sanctuary-young-divers-help-sea-star

Monterey Bay Sanctuary: Young divers help with sea star research
Program aims to develop future leaders in marine sciences

By John Sammon
Posted: 06/26/2014 04:20:25 PM PDT0 Comments | Updated: about 4 hours ago
MONTEREY >> Youthful members of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers received a wet introduction to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary on Thursday, not principally for fun, but to contribute knowledge about a mysterious illness that is killing sea star fish.

"I saw a bat star that looked diseased, but also some healthy ones," said J' Darius Thomas, 17, from Atlanta.

Chelsea Prindle, education specialist with the marine sanctuary, said the organization hosted 25 youth ages 10 to 17 from across the country with the goal of developing future leaders in marine sciences. The sanctuary works under the federally-run National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration...

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish along North American coastlines

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023950088_seastarwastingxml.html

Originally published June 28, 2014 at 8:00 PM | Page modified June 30, 2014 at 12:40 PM

Starfish are ?just melting?: Disease killing 80 percent of them

A mysterious wasting syndrome is wiping out sea stars along the entire West Coast, with a new flareup in Washington hitting hard this month and walloping Oregon waters previously unaffected.

By Lynda V. Mapes

Seattle Times staff reporter

...

Katie Pyne and Haila Schultz, student researchers at the University of Puget Sound, were shocked as they surveyed sea stars at Alki beach this week. ?It?s just melting,? Pyne said of a purple sea star disintegrating before her eyes. The smell of rotting flesh filled the cove along a jetty, and sea stars dripped from the rocks, in a slow-motion fall to their deaths.

Lisa Keith of West Seattle, a volunteer beach naturalist with the Seattle Aquarium, was sickened by the devastation of the sea star communities at Constellation Beach in south Alki. ?As a beach lover, it was disturbing, everything was so gooey and drippy and falling off the rocks and turning into bacterial mats, I thought I would just leave the beach,? Keith said.

?They are falling apart right in front of you, it is a little shocking.?
...
Because of their dominant role in the ecosystem, the devastation of sea star populations could lead to a reshuffling of the food web and restructuring of entire communities, in what ecologists call a ?cascade effect.?

That?s already under way in the waters of Howe Sound, off Vancouver Island, notes Jeffrey Marliave, vice president of marine science at the Vancouver Aquarium. The die-off of sea stars in Howe Sound has led to an explosion of its favorite prey, green sea urchins, whose populations now are devouring seaweed that spot prawns need for nursery grounds in their first year of life.

?We are seeing zero counts of prawn,? Marliave said. ?This cascade effect is bigger than the die-off, it is affecting the whole ecosystem.

?We have to be very humbled by this, there is no quick explanation to this, and there won?t be.?

Population correction

Marliave doesn?t point the finger to human causes, at least not yet. Populations of sea star were so dense he says he was not surprised to see a correction. ?We went for a good decade with incredible overpopulation, the crowding was incredible,? Marliave said. ?I?ll confess at first I was thinking, ?Hallelujah, something finally is controlling them.? But this is a little overboard, it is scary how badly things are going.?...

 

[Emily]

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish (sea star wasting syndrome), along North American coastlines

Re: Disease suspected in mass die-offs of starfish (sea star wasting syndrome), along North American coastlines

http://www.currypilot.com/News/Local-News/Sea-star-disease-in-Port-Orford

Sea star disease in Port Orford
Written by Jane Stebbins, Pilot staff writer
July 08, 2014 07:19 pm

The sea star wasting disease has crept into Port Orford ? and the demise of the colorful creature could spell the collapse of the entire ecological system in which they live.

The disease is spreading quickly.
...
?There have been changes in the Port Orford area,? said Angela Johnson, faculty research assistant with PISCO, ?and not for the better.?
...
?As far as my thoughts, I could go on forever,? she said. ?It?s sad to see the most charismatic species of the intertidal (zone) suffering, and scary to not know what is causing it or how to fix it.?