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.

    • logi@piefed.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      That was also my guess, but these creatures live(d) all up and down the Pacific coast, over a much wider range of climates than the 1.5°C change so far.

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        It’s about optimal conditions. Did the equilibrium move towards the peak of their temperature tolerance, even a bit? That sort of thing can cause a population explosion.

        • andros_rex@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 day ago

          Another aspect related to climate change could be ocean acidification. Excess CO2 in the atmosphere is pushing ocean pH down, and a slightly acidic environment might be more favorable.

          • logi@piefed.worldEnglish
            1·
            21 hours ago

            Yeah, that’s caused by increased CO2 levels and not by the heating itself, so it is a reasonable hypotheses even given the wildly varying temperatures where this is happening.

        • logi@piefed.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          But where? If the amount of heating caused these bacteria to spring to life off Washington, then why weren’t they already a problem off Southern California, which is much more than one climate change warmer, or somewhere in between?

          Sure, it can somehow lead back to climate change, or to us in some other way, but it’s not just that it’s a bit warmer now.

          • P00ptart@lemmy.world
            01·
            1 day ago

            True but it’s also not that simple either. Climate change includes things like random mutations of bacteria or viruses. And it may not just be climate change, it could be that microplastics lower their autoimmune abilities. It’s the omni-crisis. We have SO MANY ways our civilization could die. And with that, most of our species. So, so many. And as one worsens, the other gets more tense. Like Jenga or dominoes. Not the game, but the shitty pizza chain (cheap shot, I know). I mean PFAs, microplastics, nano plastics, temperature and climate change, rising sea levels, acidification, the mental damages due to additional CO2 and heat, any one of these could take down civilization, and I know I’m missing some, like the rising threat of fascism. But all of these issues are coming up all at once, and many of them are interwined. But almost all of them tie back to the industrial revolution.

  • salty_chief@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 days ago

    The answer is people peeing in the ocean. Just an hypothesis.

    Probably a Tik Tok challenge about peeing in the sea. You know standard tom foolery.