Scientists have solved the mystery of what killed over 5 billion sea stars — also known as starfish — off the Pacific coast of North America.

Scientists say they have at last solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars off the Pacific coast of North America in a decade-long epidemic.

The culprit? Bacteria that has also infected shellfish, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Now that scientists know the cause, they have a better shot at intervening to help sea stars.

Prentice said that scientists could potentially now test which of the remaining sea stars are still healthy — and consider whether to relocate them, or breed them in captivity to later transplant them to areas that have lost almost all their sunflower sea stars.

  • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    6·
    12 hours ago

    I hate that I don’t have the articles at hand to post and basically am saying ‘just trust me, bro,’ but trust me, bro. I was working with a lab doing studies on oysters, because they are a common source of vibrio infection. We found about six pathogenic bacterial species of interest that were never seen before in the bays we were pulling the oysters from. The Ph.D. lab head was a little chuffed at us because the lead grad student presented on the oysters shipped to us from (I think)* the chesapeake bay and the next day he got a call from the cdc. He wasn’t happy, even though he was the one who approved the presentation. We all got a lecture about being careful because oysters are big money makers and a “pivotal part of the local economy.” Laughably (now), this was before the election last fall. That phone call was about whether the local governments should have been advised to shut down oyster farming. I can’t imagine what the phone call to the doc would be like now. Probably threats to remove references to warming waters being a contributing factor at best, more likely to be screaming about pulling all federal funding.

    The big picture takeaway is that rising water temperatures globally are allowing bacteria that typically were only present in tropical waters are now being found in temperate waters in asia and both americas.

    *It was somewhere near the chesapeake bay, certainly in massachusetts.