Local divers find evidence of sea star die-off; biologists puzzled

Last September, divers in Vancouver, B.C., noticed something strange happening to sea stars.  Lesions appeared on the sea stars, their legs fell off, and finally they turned to white goo and disappeared. Areas with the most starfish were hit hardest. A wall of sea stars clinging to a rock wasted away and disappeared within three weeks, leaving behind a bare rock. 

The phenomena, called sea star wasting syndrome, spread throughout the west coast and reached South Puget Sound by November. Experts don’t know what’s causing it. Martin Haulena, Vancouver Aquarium veterinarian, said it could be multiple things working together: possibly the affects of a pathogen, virus, or bacteria made worse by toxins or environmental changes.

Olympia-based diver and marine biologist Don Noviello shares his observations about sea stars in local waters:

Q: How often do you dive and where do you usually dive?

Don Noviello: I made 65 dives last year. Every few weeks I’m in the water. My most common spots are in Hood Canal. I’ve heard some sporadic reports of sea star wasting in Hood Canal, but so far I haven’t seen it there. On the other side we usually go to Titlow Beach in Tacoma, or Sunrise Beach Park just north of Gig Harbor. That’s where I first saw signs of sea star wasting syndrome.

Q: What did it look like?

DN: It was (late December). I had heard reports of it much earlier from the news and other divers. One of the things I saw at Gig Harbor was a small sunflower star on a rock wall. Normally they’re gripping with all their arms and moving around. This one was very sad looking. It was still gripped onto the wall but several of the arms were dangling down like it was melting. I saw another one that was in pieces and I actually saw one of the arms completely broken off but the tube feet were still working and it was walking away very slowly all by itself. Others had white growths or were just melting into a white goo.

Q: How did the amount of sea stars that day compare to previous dives?

DN: Well, I guess there were fewer sea stars although I think we got there relatively soon after whatever is causing it got there. I was seeing animals actively dying and from what I hear it doesn’t take a long time before there’s nothing left but goo. Some species that we saw seemed to be doing OK. It’s not like it’s killing every single species, at least not at the same rate.

Q: How prolific are starfish in the Puget Sound?

DN: The epicenter for sea stars is from Alaska down to the middle of California. Puget Sound is right in there. For divers it’s a great place because it’s so accessible. Our sea stars are large and in charge. They’re more common here and bigger and, in my opinion, more interesting than almost any place else.

On a shallow part of the dive we’ll see tens to up to one hundred sea stars in one dive. It’s not unusual to see close to a dozen different species of sea stars in one dive. They’re almost so common that you don’t really think about it. It would be a terrible tragedy if they all disappeared.

Q: You’re a biologist?

DN: I am also a biologist. I actually work on oil spill team for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Q: Do you have a favorite theory about what’s causing sea star wasting syndrome?

DN: I don’t at this point. It makes me worry because we don’t know. In the early 1980s there was a die-off of a somewhat related animal, the sea urchin. Between 1984 and 1985 well over 90 percent of the urchins throughout the Caribbean died off. They still haven’t recovered and they never definitively proved what caused it. I would hate to think that we could lose a big portion of our sea stars in Puget Sound and that they could be gone for decades. I’m sure there would be ecological effects, but also as a diver it would just be so different not to see them. ◙