A6
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2021
Trenary: ‘It’s just so amazing that so
many people love and care about me’
Continued from Page A1
Dennis Wise/University of Washington
Adult sunfl ower sea stars feeding on mussels at the University of Washington Friday Harbor
Laboratories.
Scientists become parents
for endangered sea stars
By NELL
GREENFIELDBOYCE
National Public Radio
Jason Hodin hauls up a
rope that’s hanging from a
dock in the waters off San Juan
Island in the Pacifi c North-
west. At the end is a square,
sandwich-size Tupperware
container, with mesh-covered
holes in the sides to let water
fl ow through. Hodin pulls
off the lid and peers inside at
some crushed bits of shell. He
points to some reddish-orange
dots.
“See that? That little dot
right there in front of my fi n-
ger?” Hodin said. “That’s a
juvenile sea star that’s about a
month old.”
It’s only the size of a poppy
seed. But when this baby is all
grown up, it could be as big
as a manhole cover. That’s
because this is Pycnopodia
helianthoides, aka the sun-
fl ower sea star. It’s one of the
biggest sea stars in the world,
with an arm span that can be
more than 3 feet across, and it
used to be a common sight in
the waters off the West Coast.
Now, though, it’s criti-
cally endangered and is being
driven toward extinction by
a mysterious, devastating
disease.
This is why Hodin and his
colleagues at the University
of Washington’s Friday Har-
bor Laboratories have spent
the last two years fi guring
out how to raise this species
in captivity. It’s an act of des-
peration born out of the hope
that someday, lab-grown sun-
fl ower sea stars could be rein-
troduced into places where
this species has disappeared.
This voracious preda-
tor used to prowl the waters
across a nearly 2,000-mile
range, from Alaska to Baja
California. Their brightly col-
ored bodies — which come
in vivid shades of orange,
pink, blue and green — would
move along the seafl oor on as
many as 24 arms, gobbling
up mussels and scallops and
sea urchins. Their consump-
tion of sea urchins, in particu-
lar, helped to protect vital for-
ests of kelp, which are home
to numerous marine species.
In recent years, however,
populations of the sunfl ower
sea star have declined by 80%
to 100%. In California, “sun-
fl ower sea stars are more
than 95% gone,” Hodin said.
“Some people think that they
are entirely extinct in the wild
down there. I’ve heard scat-
tered reports of people maybe
seeing a few.”
This species seems partic-
ularly susceptible to a wasting
disease that’s hit more than 20
sea star species since 2013.
Hodin says the sick sea stars
are horrible to behold. “I wit-
nessed it, and it’s not pretty,”
he said. “They really do kind
of like dissolve into a pile of
goo.”
In 2019, Hodin said,
the Nature Conservancy
approached him about the
possibility of setting up a pro-
gram to breed sunfl ower sea
stars. He’d already been inter-
ested in the basic science of
sea stars because of the way
they are able to transform
themselves from bilaterally
symmetrical larvae to juve-
niles with fi ve-sided symme-
try. He agreed to try raising
large numbers of sunfl ower
sea stars to adulthood, even
‘NOBODY KNOWS HOW TO AGE A
SEA STAR, SO YOU SEE SOMETHING
IN THE WILD AND YOU HAVE NO
IDEA HOW OLD IT IS. IT COULD BE
2 YEARS OLD. IT COULD BE 50. IT
COULD BE 100.’
Jason Hodin | University of Washington’s
Friday Harbor Laboratories
though no one had tried to do
anything like this before.
“For this species in partic-
ular, there were very few pub-
lished eff orts to raise them at
all, even through embryo or
larval stages,” Hodin said.
He didn’t know the answer
to some of the most basic
questions, such as what did
this species eat early on? And
how fast could it grow?
“Nobody knows how to
age a sea star, so you see
something in the wild and
you have no idea how old it
is,” Hodin said. “It could be
2 years old. It could be 50. It
could be 100.”
His team started by taking
some sunfl ower sea stars from
the wild. About 30 of these
giants now live outside the lab
in large, burbling tanks.
“I didn’t really anticipate
how exuberant their behaviors
are,” Hodin said. “You get to
know them, and you get to
know them individually. We
noticed early on that we could
tell them apart by their color
patterns. And we gave them
names.”
A lot of their names are
linked to their colors. Prince,
for example, has arms with
tips that are purple.
“This here’s Deep Blue,
and she’s our biggest,”
researcher Fleur Anteau said
as she feeds the sea stars by
gently tucking mussels under
their arms. “Some of them,
when I open the cage, will
basically really start moving
their arms to the surface, like
Olga here. Some of them are a
little shyer.”
Even the shy ones sud-
denly come to life once they
clutch a mussel. They hunch
over the prey so they can
swallow it whole. “When
food comes, then you really
see the predator come out,”
Anteau notes.
Pointing to the red eye spot
at the end of each arm, she
adds, “They’re looking at you.
They don’t have eyes like us,
but they can see a light-and-
dark kind of vision.”
This lab has fi gured out
how to get sperm and eggs
from the wild-caught adults
and grow up their off spring.
The oldest sea stars they’ve
produced are now nearly a
year and a half, and they are
about 3 inches across.
The lab only has about a
dozen young sea stars that
have reached this stage. But
considering how little was
known at the start — and the
fact that they had to work
out their techniques during a
pandemic that restricted who
could go to the lab — Hodin
said he feels lucky to have
gotten that many.
“We’re assuming that
by next year, they might be
reproductive, based on ones
that we’ve seen in the fi eld,”
Hodin said. “It’s good news
that they can grow relatively
quickly.”
Having learned the tricks
needed to raise these sea stars,
the research team’s new goal
is to produce up to 1,000 more
young stars. The lab is full of
glass pickle jars that contain
larvae, and food containers
that hold the poppy seed-size
juveniles.
Hodin said that fi rst, lab-
grown sea stars could be put
into the local waters, where
their parents came from, to
test how well they fare in the
wild. If that goes well, it might
be possible in the coming
years to try to restore popula-
tions off the California coast.
But the danger of sea star
wasting disease could still be
out there.
“I would say at the out-
set that it’s critical to under-
stand more about what’s kill-
ing them before trying to put
them back,” said Drew Har-
vell, a professor emeritus with
Cornell University who is also
a researcher at the Friday Har-
bor Laboratories.
She says scientists dis-
agree on the nature of the
killer. Some blame an infec-
tious agent, such as a virus,
while others point to warming
oceans or other environmental
changes.
“It’s extremely controver-
sial,” said Harvell, author of
a book called “Ocean Out-
break: Confronting the Ris-
ing Tide of Marine Disease.”
She believes there’s a lot of
evidence that sea star wasting
disease is infectious.
This month, she and her
colleagues are starting new
lab experiments to test that
idea. In a fi sh pathogen lab,
extracts from sick sea stars
will be injected into seem-
ingly healthy ones. She’ll
be using sunfl ower sea stars
since they are so susceptible.
“These are diffi cult exper-
iments to get to run consis-
tently, and so if you try to do
them with a species that is
somewhat resistant, some-
times just nothing happens,”
Harvell said.
Even if scientists never are
able to fi gure out what causes
this illness, she said, eventu-
ally it could still be worth try-
ing some kind of reintroduc-
tion of captive-bred sea stars
to the wild.
“At some point we would
just have to probably go for-
ward,” Harvell said, “even
though scientifi cally that
wouldn’t be the very best
plan.”
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“I couldn’t deal with it.
I t was going to kill me,” he
said. “There was nothing
I could do. It took the fi re
department half an hour to
get there. So I just sat in a
chair outside my house and
watched my house burn.”
He emerged unscathed
but with just his phone, a
pair of fl ip fl ops and the
clothes on his back.
Trenary bought the prop-
erty north of Nehalem in
1986. It featured just a small
house at the time. As his
family grew and they settled
down, he worked on addi-
tions to the home and started
to make a living in farming
produce.
Today, Trenary said he’s
known among locals as the
godfather of organic farm-
ing — best known for his
spinach and leafy greens.
Along with selling his pro-
duce to local restaurants and
at farmer s markets , he said
he’s proud to be a source
of advice for many younger
farmers .
“He gave us a local
source of organic produce,
before anybody else did,”
said Pam Trenary, Jeff ’s sis-
ter. “In the beginning, he
really did his research and
studied the biologics of
organics. He was a model
for making small farms
happen here. And with sus-
tainable agriculture.”
As Trenary begins the
early stages of navigating
‘THERE WAS NOTHING I
COULD DO. IT TOOK THE FIRE
DEPARTMENT HALF AN HOUR TO
GET THERE. SO I JUST SAT IN A
CHAIR OUTSIDE MY HOUSE AND
WATCHED MY HOUSE BURN.’
Jeff Trenary | local organic farmer who recently lost his home in a fi re
the crisis, neighbors and
co-workers are returning
the kindness he’s shown his
community for decades.
“I’ll go to the grocery
store and I’ll try to pay
them and they just tell me to
leave,” Trenary said. “I go
to my car and just sit there
and cry because it’s just so
amazing that so many peo-
ple love and care about me.”
Kingfi sher
Farms
launched an online fund-
raiser through GoFundMe
to support Trenary and his
family. As of early Mon-
day , it’s received around
$40,000 toward a $75 ,000
goal. Comments on the
fundraiser
page
from
friends and others touched
by Trenary’s work share
colorful stories of how his
farming and acts of charity
have had a positive impact .
John Newman, the chef
at Newman’s at 988 in Can-
non Beach, refers to Tre-
nary as his “best friend.”
“People have stepped
up — that’s refreshing to
know, having lived here,
that your friends and family
can step up when things go
wrong,” Newman said. “It’s
sad, but I’m optimistic and I
look forward to Jeff landing
on his feet.”
The two have a shared
appreciation for food and
have traveled and done
business together since
Newman moved to the
region in 1998. “The qual-
ity of his food compared to
packaged salad that you’d
get from Portland or wher-
ever, if you put them next
to each other, it’s not even
comparable,”
Newman
said. “It’s like a diff erent
product.”
Though overwhelmed
with grief and unsure of
his next step, Trenary said
he won’t leave his prop-
erty and is hoping to rebuild
soon. Friends like Newman
believe the community will
rally around Trenary and
ensure he’s able to get a
new place to live .
“I’ve got a bunch of car-
penter friends that are say-
ing they’re going to help me
reestablish a new place,”
Trenary said.
Smith: Addressing emotional needs and
lives outside the classroom are big priorities
Continued from Page A1
Working as part of a Ful-
bright teacher exchange in
West Yorkshire, England
— a place she said reminds
her of Astoria — inspired
Smith to continue explor-
ing alternate approaches to
education.
Today, one of her big-
gest priorities as an educa-
tor is addressing the emo-
tional needs and lives of her
students outside the class-
room. The emphasis was
something Smith said was
enhanced by her experience
during the pandemic.
“She’s very concerned
about and intuitive about the
lived experience of her stu-
dents,” said Carrie Fergu-
son, a former co-worker and
the principal at James Tem-
pleton Elementary School in
Tigard .
“I always appreciated
that about her, because
she did always advocate
for the marginalized or the
‘I FEEL REALLY LUCKY. THERE
WERE A LOT OF SIGNS ALONG
THE WAY THAT SHARED FOR ME
THAT THIS WAS THE RIGHT PATH.’
Nicole Smith | new principal of Lewis and Clark Elementary School .
underserved or under repre-
sented students and kind of
reminded us about them,”
Ferguson said.
Ferguson
highlighted
how Smith was particu-
larly good at acknowledg-
ing and unpacking details
of larger ideas and plans in
education, something that
proved to be a complemen-
tary trait in their time work-
ing together.
Though Smith is new to
Astoria , she said regular vis-
its to her grandfather’s home
north of Seaside throughout
her life exposed her to the
beauty of the North Coast
and the growth of Astoria .
“At Lewis and Clark, as
soon as I walked into the
building for my interview,
there was something about
it that felt like home,” she
said. “And I thought, ‘T his
is an environment that I
want to be a part of and
lead and continue to nurture
and grow and be a part of a
really strong community.’”
As schools continue
to navigate the pandemic,
Smith is excited to develop
more creative approaches
to engage with her students
and the community.
“I feel really lucky,” she
said. “There were a lot of
signs along the way that
shared for me that this was
the right path.”
Firehouse: Cost will be about $10.5 million
Continued from Page A1
Among the 309 voters
who participated in the sur-
vey, 51% supported both the
Highlands Lane site and the
bond, a narrow margin that
indicates voters are more
skeptical than others in the
community.
This was the second sur-
vey conducted by the city
to help determine a fi re-
house site. A 2019 survey
pinpointed the High Point
site on North Marion as
preferable to Gearhart Park
or the fi rehouse on Pacifi c
Way.
The new survey period
was from June 25 to Aug. 1
— just over a month.
By comparison, the
2019 survey was open
for three months and
received signifi cantly more
responses, with 947 people
participating.
The new survey came
as plans for a fi rehouse on
North Marion Avenue hit
a wall. The project faced
high costs and opposition
from the nearby Palisades
Homeowners Association.
The city is working
with planners to bring the
30-acre Cottages at Gear-
hart subdivision off High-
lands Lane into the city’s
urban growth boundary.
The cost to perform land
improvements and build
the fi rehouse on the High-
lands Lane site will be
about $10.5 million.
At last week’s City
C ouncil meeting, City
Administrator Chad Sweet
said he was pleased by a
recent geotechnical report .
“This could aff ect the type
of foundation that we use
in this building, and they
anticipate that this will
actually not be a foundation
as expensive as the one we
were looking at previously,
so there’s likely going to be
a cost savings for that.”
Sweet also said con-
versations with the state
Department of Geology
and Mineral Industries
indicated the Highlands
Lane site was outside the
extra-large tsunami zone.
“That’s kind of a big deal,”
he said.
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