Starfish Wasting Disease

Observation: While we were doing a clam survey at Long Beach about 5 miles north of Kake, we noticed a starfish that did not appear healthy, when picked up, the legs were limp and lighter in color. Another starfish had only 3 legs. Indicative that something is going on in our beach environment, possible wasting disease. Edna Jackson, Organized Village of Kake

Physical & Biological Sciences Consult: Melissa Miner, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology writes, "I agree, the Evasterias in that photo doesn't look very healthy. The resolution of the photo is pretty low, so I can't zoom in to look at the tissue closely, but from the description it sounds like it could be SSWS. Because there is no way to test for the disease at this point, we can't know for sure that SSWS is present, but if large #'s of stars begin to show similar symptoms, we can be pretty confident that it is due to the disease. I'll forward your e-mail to others in our group to get their opinion, and if everyone agrees that the photo/description likely point to SSWS, we'll add it to our tracking map. Thanks! --Melissa" University of California, Santa Cruz

Resource:

UC Santa Cruz, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology – Pacific Rocky Intertidal Monitoring: Trends and Synthesis, "Sea stars along much of the North American Pacific coast are dying in great numbers from a mysterious wasting syndrome. Similar die-offs have occurred before in the 1970s, 80s, and the 90s, but never before at this magnitude and over such a wide geographic area."

UC Santa Cruz, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology – Melissa Miner has also presented to the LEO Network back in December of 2013. To view presentation or download a PDF version of, "Sea Star Wasting Syndrome: detecting, tracking, and following the progression" go to the ANTHC LEO Network Webinar Archive website and scroll down.