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.
Reducing the number
of dead or dying birds will
require a change of global
scale, she said.
“It’s like too many holes
in a dam,” Parish added.
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decided to rescue their
bird. They didn’t want it
to get hypothermia.
“We’re all concerned
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“<ou can’t put your ¿nger in
one hole and stop the leak.”
A loss of shell¿sh to the
toxic algae, for example,
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Saranpaa said he fears
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