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About Cannon Beach gazette. (Cannon Beach, Or.) 1977-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 28, 2015)
August 28, 2015 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com • 7A Sea stars make a comeback after wasting disease The epidemic is one of the largest marine disease events worldwide, Miner added. The survival rate is dif¿cult to determine when there are also sea stars mi- grating and predators pick- ing the animals off. By Dani Palmer Cannon Beach Gazette Sea stars are making a comeback after a mysteri- ous wasting disease killed off more than 90 percent of the population. In July, Haystack Rock Awareness Program staff found 82 sea stars, most- ly ochre and six rayed stars, at their north boulders location. Of those, only one had signs of wasting and it was a Cat- egory 1, a lesion restricted to one area. But it will take a long time before they fully recover. Melissa Miner, a research associate at the University of California, Santa Cruz with MARINe, the Multi-Agen- cy Rock Intertidal Network that surveys sea stars along the entire west coast, said populations are still low and, because they are slow-grow- ing animals, it will likely be a decade or longer before numbers return to pre-wast- ing syndrome levels. “There’s always this desire to be optimistic about it, but the sea stars were impacted a lot,” Miner said. “It’ll be a while before they recover.” The good news is that no one is worried about the ani- mals going extinct, she added. Melissa Keyser, interim coordinator of the Haystack Rock Awareness Program, said the sunÀower and ochre sea stars are considered key- stone species as major inter- tidal predators. Because of their impact on the ecosystem, if they ever died off, “it could Response SUBMITTED PHOTO/CANNON BEACH GAZETTE A Haystack Rock Awareness Program member holds a deteriorating sea star in spring 2014. SUBMITTED PHOTO/CANNON BEACH GAZETTE A sea star with lesions from sea star wasting syndrome hangs from a rock in Cannon Beach during the spring of 2014. be catastrophic for Haystack Rock,” she said. Sampling results Volunteers and HRAP staff typically survey three sites every three months and send their results to MA- RINe. Researchers look for lesions and missing limbs. In July 2014, HRAP found 41 sea stars at that north boulders site and only 13 were healthy, showing no signs of the disease. When they do contract wasting syndrome, the sea stars begin deteriorating in a matter of days or weeks, Keyser said. HRAP’s east boulder at the Needles site turned out 42 sea stars in July 2015, one with a Category 1 rat- ing and two with a Category 2. In 2014, volunteers found 37 sea stars and 27 showed signs of the disease, includ- ing a Category 4 with se- vere tissue deterioration. Miner said MARINe found some diseased sea stars, but not many during a recent re-sampling at ¿ve long-term and three short-term sites on the Oregon coast. “Numbers are de¿nitely down from pre- vious years,” she said. But results looked differ- ent in Washington. In June, researchers be- gan seeing many sick sea stars in Washington’s inter- tidal waters again. Fisher- men are still ¿nding signs of the disease when they pull sea stars up, Miner said. In California, the num- ber of diseased animals was down in the spring. “It’s interesting,” Miner said. “Different places are doing different things.” Potential causes Sea star wasting syn- drome hit the animals hard in Washington in 2013. Keyser said researchers began see- ing a local impact in 2014. Miner noted that there is a correlation with higher ocean temperatures in some areas, but not all. A warming ocean may make the sea stars more susceptible to disease or stress them out, she added. While sea star wasting syndrome has been attributed to densovirus, Miner said it’s unknown if it’s the same strain researchers witnessed in Cali- fornia before the epidemic. They haven’t been able to get good tissue samples, and emergency research funding is scarce. Scientists have ideas about the cause of the virus, she said, but nothing de¿nitive. “This is a lot of arm wav- ing right now,” she said. “We just don’t know.” California’s event was tied to warm water, however, as re- searchers saw healthier sea stars in deeper waters, she added. Keyser said wasting dis- eases have also occurred when sea stars overpopulate “but never to this extent.” Linked to many sea star wasting cases, a warming ocean is hard to stop with man-made climate change and natural cycles like El Niños, Miner said. “That’s the trickiest thing,” she noted, “whether we’ll be able to change our ways enough to make a difference.” Warmer waters have af- fected other species, such as seabirds, impacting the en- tire ecosystem, Keyser said. Some studies have sug- gested that the disease is spread via human touch. Keyser said more research is needed before making any conclusions in Cannon Beach. Researchers sterilize their equipment and boats before going out. Miner suggested visitors and resi- dents err on the side of cau- tion when viewing sea stars. She added that important information comes from the public. She encourages beachgoers to submit sight- ings of any sick sea stars to seastarwasting.org. As is the case in other mysterious die-off events, researchers will have to ¿nd more answers before taking any action. Researchers seek answers but can do little about dying birds Birds from Page 1A And spikes typically occur in September or October after storm events, she added, none of which have occurred this summer. Reporting beaches from Newport through the North Coast reported an average of 10 to 14 carcasses per kilo- meter this month. There was a high of roughly 20 per kilo- meter. “It’s all over the map,” Parish said. “Not everybody is reporting large numbers.” Not everyone has reported back yet, either, so it’s hard to tell how bad it is or if it’ll get worse, she added. Some beaches are at the high end of previous years, but not yet catastrophic. A warming ocean Last fall, tens of thousands of the Cassin’s auklet, a small seabird, died. Parish said there was a correlation between warmer waters and a change in the distribution of food. “We’re kind of hoping we don’t have another repeat season,” she said. “The North Paci¿c is pretty darn warm and has been for some time.” But there is usually up- welling, making it cooler along the coast and providing the common murre “a fair amount of food.” Assistant Director of the Wildlife Center of the North Coast in Astoria Josh Saran- paa said the center has re- ceived about 12 birds a day over the past month, many from Cannon Beach. The ma- jority, about 90 percent, are common murres. “Every bird we’re seeing is starving to death,” he said. “It’s pretty bad.” Many are adults. Saranpaa said they may be starving be- cause the adult birds are fo- cused on taking care of their young. With warming ocean temperatures, ¿sh are diving deeper than the birds can han- dle in some areas, he added. Staff at the center are expect- ing even warmer tempera- tures with El Niño. Parish said COASST hasn’t received data from all of its reporting rehab cen- ters yet. The high number of starving adults along the North Coast, even experi- enced scavenger birds, in- dicates a “serious sign of a stressed ecosystem.” Saranpaa said seabirds are biological indicators, a way to check an environment’s health. “Starvation is the norm” for wildlife, Parish noted. Many young murre die be- cause they’re separated from their fathers, for example. In the case of large scale die- offs, she added, scientists care more about the why. “When you see so many starving, something is not quite right out there,” Saran- paa said. Parish added that there are multiple reasons a bird could starve to death including a lack of food, more competi- tion, illness and poison. Toxic algae bloom It’s also “been a really odd year,” Parish said, with mul- tiple regional scale events, including the west coast’s largest toxic algae bloom on record, stretching from cen- tral California to Alaska. This summer researchers found Àoating whale carcass- es near Alaska’s Aleutian Is- lands as a result of the bloom. Those deaths, Parish said, were essentially caused by poison. Other species are affect- ed as well. In addition to the whales, ¿sh are eating poi- sonous plankton, and birds are eating those ¿sh. Saranpaa said they re- ceived 770 sick or diseased seabirds in just over a week during a 2009 toxic algae bloom. “Every nook and cranny” of the wildlife center was turned into an area for birds, he added. If toxic algae is the cul- prit, however, scientists would expect more species to be impacted, Parish noted. She said COASST is waiting on necropsy reports from the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin for more information. The waiting game At this point, Parish said there’s not much researchers can do but wait and watch. Even when they do get nec- ropsy results back, she add- ed, researchers can do little more than document the event. 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