The Pacific ocean ecology

Mysterious epidemic devastates starfish population off the Pacific Coast

Up and down the Pacific Coast, starfish are dying by the tens of thousands and no one knows why. Special correspondent Katie Campbell reports from Seattle on how researchers and citizen scientists are investigating the spread of the mysterious and distressing syndrome

.

NOAA-led researchers discover ocean acidity is dissolving shells of tiny snails off the U.S. West Coast

A healthy pteropod collected during the U.S. West Coast survey cruise. (Credit: NOAA)

First evidence of marine snails from the natural environment along the U.S. West Coast with signs that shells are dissolving. (Credit: NOAA

,

NOAA 

April 30, 2014

A NOAA-led research team has found the first evidence that acidity of continental shelf waters off the West Coast is dissolving the shells of tiny free-swimming marine snails, called pteropods, which provide food for pink salmon, mackerel and herring, according to a new paper published inProceedings of the Royal Society B.

Researchers estimate that the percentage of pteropods in this region with dissolving shells due to ocean acidification has doubled in the nearshore habitat since the pre-industrial era and is on track to triple by 2050 when coastal waters become 70 percent more corrosive than in the pre-industrial era due to human-caused ocean acidification.

An image from a scanning electron microscope of dissolution on a pteropod shell. (Credit: NOAA)

The new research documents the movement of corrosive waters onto the continental shelf from April to September during the upwelling season, when winds bring water rich in carbon dioxide up from depths of about 400-600 feet to the surface and onto the continental shelf.

“Our findings are the first evidence that a large fraction of the West Coast pteropod population is being affected by ocean acidification,” said Nina Bednarsek, Ph.D., of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, the lead author of the paper. “Dissolving coastal pteropod shells point to the need to study how acidification may be affecting the larger marine ecosystem. These nearshore waters provide essential habitat to a great diversity of marine species, including many economically important fish that support coastal economies and provide us with food."

The term “ocean acidification” describes the process of ocean water becoming corrosive as a result of absorbing nearly a third of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from human sources. This change in ocean chemistry is affecting marine life, particularly organisms with calcium carbonate skeletons or shells, such as corals, oysters, mussels, and small creatures in the early stages of the food chain such as pteropods. The pteropod is a free-swimming snail found in oceans around the world that grows to a size of about one-eighth to one-half inch.

The research team, which also included scientists from NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Oregon State University, found that the highest percentage of sampled pteropods with dissolving shells were along a stretch of the continental shelf from northern Washington to central California, where 53 percent of pteropods sampled using a fine mesh net had severely dissolved shells. The ocean’s absorption of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions is also increasing the level of corrosive waters near the ocean’s surface where pteropods live.


“We did not expect to see pteropods being affected to this extent in our coastal region for several decades,” said William Peterson, Ph.D., an oceanographer at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and one of the paper’s co-authors. “This study will help us as we compare these results with future observations to analyze how the chemical and physical processes of ocean acidification are affecting marine organisms.”

Richard Feely, senior scientist from NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab and co-author of the research article, said that more research is needed to study how corrosive waters may be affecting other species in the ecosystem. "We do know that organisms like oyster larvae and pteropods are affected by water enriched with carbon dioxide. The impacts on other species, such as other shellfish and larval or juvenile fish that have economic significance, are not yet fully understood."

“Acidification of our oceans may impact marine ecosystems in a way that threatens the sustainability of the marine resources we depend on,” said Libby Jewett, Director of the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program. “Research on the progression and impacts of ocean acidification is vital to understanding the consequences of our burning of fossil fuels.” 


The research drew upon a West Coast survey by the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program in August 2011, that was conducted onboard the R/V Wecoma, owned by the National Science Foundation and operated by Oregon State University.

NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Join us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and our other social media channels.

The dying starfish

Scientists “Especially Worried”

• “We don’t know how the pathogen is doing this”
• Sea star broke in half, walked away, then turned to goo ‘Environmental factors’ to blame?
• Hundreds wash up dead in Seattle

ENENews,

12 November, 2013

Washed up seastars at Brace Point, near Seattle Washington from Laura James on Vimeo.

Santa Barbara Independent, Nov. 7, 2013: 

Sea Star Wasting Syndrome Reaches Santa Barbara County [...] During an ocean dive Thursday morning off the coast of Santa Cruz, Pete Raimondi [UCSC ecology professor] watched two halves of a broken sea star ravaged by a “wasting syndrome” walk away from each other. Not long after, they would turn into mushy piles of goo, disintegrated by a disease that has so far perplexed scientists. [...] it appears the syndrome is impacting as many as 10 sea star species up and down the West Coast, wiping out entire populations in certain areas [...] So far, biologists haven’t been able to pinpoint the disease’s trigger, unsure whether it’s caused by a virus, bacterial infection, environmental factors, or some combination thereof. [...] “They can go from great to pieces in 12 hours,” said Raimondi. [...] the Pacific Ocean is in the middle of a cooling trend, so biologists are at a loss to explain the outbreak. […]

Fox News, Nov. 11, 2013: 

Since June, researchers have seen the disease spread from as far as British Columbia, Canada, down through California and, within the past year, from Maine through New Jersey. The scientists tracking the disease find this simultaneous bicoastal infection especially alarming. “There is no direct route to get from Providence to Seattle,” Gary Wessel, a molecular biologist at Brown University who is working to identify the agent causing the disease, told LiveScience. “So we don’t know how the pathogen would be doing this.”

Q13 FOX News, Nov. 11, 2013: 

Hundreds of dead sea stars wash up in West Seattle [...] According to underwater explorer and videographer Laura James, the sea stars were found on a short stretch of beach in West Seattle. It’s unknown if these sea stars are connected to a large number of dead starfish washing up along the entire West Coast [...] In the video, James implores people to keep an eye on the local beaches and report any unusual occurrences.

Starfish die-off

Mystery: Starfish turn to ‘slime’ along Pacific coast 

• “We’re talking about a loss of millions and millions” Compared to medieval ‘Black Death’
• Innards become exposed and fall apart
• Cases ballooning in Alaska

ENENews,

7 November, 2013

Reuters, Nov. 5, 2013: Mysterious disease turning starfish to ‘slime’ on U.S. West Coast [...] ravaging starfish in record numbers along the U.S. West Coast [...] “It’s pretty spooky because we don’t have any obvious culprit [...]” said Pete Raimondi, chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz’s Long Marine Lab. [...] Starfish have suffered from the syndrome on and off for decades but have usually been reported in small numbers, isolated to southern California and linked to a rise in seawater temperatures, which is not the case this time, Raimondi said. Since June, wasting starfish have been found in dozens of coastal sites ranging from south-east Alaska to Orange County, California, and the mortality rates have been higher than ever seen before, Raimondi said. [...]

Guardian, Nov. 5, 2013: “Their tissue just melts away,” said Melissa Miner, a biologist and researcher with the Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network, a group of government agencies, universities and non-profit groups that monitor tidal wildlife and environment along the west coast. Miner, based in Washington state, has studied wasting starfish locally and in Alaska since June, when only a few cases had been reported. “It has ballooned into a much bigger issue since then,” she said.

TIME, Nov. 5, 2013: It’s normal for a tiny portion of starfish populations to suffer from so-called “wasting syndrome.” [...] But the disease is typically isolated to one or two starfish among hundreds in a rocky tide pool. And even in bad cases, it rarely stretches beyond a single population. “The spatial extent is unprecedented,” says Pete Raimondi [...] “If it’s as extensive as it looks like it is, then we’re talking about a loss of millions and millions.” [...] [Though they] often recover from the lesions, infections on the West Coast are proving lethal. [...] starfish generally have the ability to grow new arms, in these cases wounds don’t heal and innards become exposed as the animal falls apart. [...]

KCET, Nov. 5, 2013: [S]cientists aren’t sure whether that bacterium causes the disease or just comes along for the ride. And the extent of this disease outbreak, along thousands of miles of coast, has them worried. [...] Previous outbreaks of wasting disease had been linked to warmer ocean water during El Niño events, but this year’s epidemic seems to be happening in places where the water has been colder [...] At least 10 species have been found suffering from the illness [...] “this mortality rate is every bit as bad as some villages that were virtually wiped out by the medieval Black Death,” [U.C. Santa Cruz researcher Allison Gong] writes.

Yet one scientist sees the situation quite differently than the rest

CBS Los Angeles, Nov. 4, 2013: “There is no indication that it has any connection to anything other than a natural occurrence; it is following a pattern that we’ve seen before,” [Mike Schaadt, Director of the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro] said. “So there’s no indication that this has some other connection.”

Watch the CBS Los Angeles broadcast here

See also this: