
Starfish are dissolving up and down the West Coast - austinz
http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7222479/starfish-wasting-quest-save-keystone-species
======
debacle
IIRC, there is a segment of starfish that can be dissolved similar to a
sponge, and this is commonly done when the starfish wants to spread out its
biological range due to lack of food.

This ([http://www.mnn.com/earth-
matters/animals/stories/mysterious-...](http://www.mnn.com/earth-
matters/animals/stories/mysterious-wasting-syndrome-is-turning-west-coast-
starfish-into-goo)) seems to be a better article from last year about the same
syndrome. Apparently this is a cyclical pattern and may be an as yet
understood part of the starfish lifecycle. That article mentions warmer
waters, overpopulation, and a potential (but as yet undetected) virus, which
is also having an impact on the east coast.

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iterationx
Not just starfish

National Geographic, Nov 17, 2014: Urchins and cucumbers seemed to have
escaped the ill effects of the virus until now. But in recent weeks, reports
have started to come in that they too are dying along beaches in the Pacific
Northwest, Hewson said… [He and his team are] studying the urchins and sea
cucumbers that are already dying to see if the same killer is responsible.

[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141117-starf...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141117-starfish-
dying-epidemic-virus-animal-ocean-science/)

~~~
iterationx
Ronald L. Shimek, PhD, marine biologist, Nov 10, 2014: Jan Kocian, diving
photographer extraordinare… has been actively surveying several marine
subtidal areas in northern Puget Sound for some time… [During a Sept. 18]
dive… on Whidbey Island, Washington… he started seeing things he had never
previously observed.… there were many animals lying exposed on the sandy sea
floor, looking limp, sick or dead. Red sea cucumbers were flaccid and dead…
Aleutian Moon snails were in odd postures… pink/yellow worms [were] another
rare or unusual sight…. Nuttall’s cockles were on the sediment surface with
their siphons out, instead of being buried… 22nd September, the area
containing dying animals was not only still present it was spreading; whatever
seemed to be the cause was still doing its dirty work… 25th September [many]
red sea cucumbers… were lying fully exposed, and apparently dead… 29th of
September… A few living Cucumaria were acting oddly, not quite dead, but just
slightly responsive to touch… Numerous green sea urchins were found with their
spines in abnormal postures, definitely not looking healthy… The full extent
of the dead area, and the reason for the mortality, remain indeterminate.
[http://www.reef2rainforest.com/2014/11/10/a-shallow-water-
de...](http://www.reef2rainforest.com/2014/11/10/a-shallow-water-dead-zone-in-
puget-sound/)

And the polar bears, and the orcas.

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tjradcliffe
This article is pretty close to junk science reporting.

The core argument of the recently published paper it links to
([http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/11/12/1416625111.full...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/11/12/1416625111.full.pdf+html))
is this:

1) No non-viral cause can be found

2) Viral load is higher in symptomatic animals

3) Animals inoculated with homogenized tissue from symptomatic animals almost
all become symptomatic.

This argues strongly for a viral cause. The argument for the specific virus in
question is much less strong, although it does look like a plausible
candidate. The reason it is less strong is that the testing is entirely non-
specific, and a plausible alternative explanation is that the symptomatic
animals are having a tough time of it, immunologically, so an endemic but
harmless virus is opportunistically going hog wild.

The thing that puts this article into junk science reporting territory is its
ritual invocation of climate change, which others have pointed out. Let me be
specific about what I see as the issues.

The article says flat-out that temperature is not an issue, because the
animals don't get better when the temperature drops: _" But the current die-
off is different. Not only is it bigger, it doesn’t seem to be linked to water
temperature. Where other die-offs had slowed down when the waters cooled, this
time, the sea stars kept dying through the winter of 2013-2014."_

Then it contradicts itself and insinuates that _maybe it 's climate change
after all!_:

 _The virus probably isn’t the whole story, both Lahner and Raimondi say.
Lahner took sea stars that were disintegrating at 54 degrees Fahrenheit and
cooled their water to 50 degrees. "They all went from falling apart, having
their viscera hanging out, to pretty healthy in a day," she says. "I came
back, and they were like, ready for the cover of Vogue. They were perfect." So
temperature may play a role in the animals’ ability to recover as well.

The north Pacific basin, on average, has warmed by about half a degree
centigrade from 1955 to 2013, according to data from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration. "That’s kind of a scary number," says Andy
Allegra, a NOAA data specialist. "It’s very large."_

There is likely something interesting going on here, but this is a pretty big
"hmm... that's odd" moment that just goes by un-noticed.

Water temperatures around Vancouver are in the 60's in the summer, and drop to
the low 40's or even into the 30's in the winter, so you would expect a _huge_
seasonal effect if a change from 54 to 50 resulted in unhealthy animals
suddenly being ready for the cover of Vogue". And yet--as quoted above--we are
assured that the die-off continued in winter (even as far south as San Diego
water temperatures can dip below 50 in January).

So this article contains a contradiction of Biblical proportions, the kind of
junk reasoning you see in the gibberish of 9/11 conspiracy theorists and
climate change denialists (the real kind, who think it's a hoax, not people
like me who think nuclear power is a good option for dealing with it, although
I often get accused of denialism on that basis.)

Science is the discipline of publicly testing ideas by systematic observation,
controlled experiment and Bayesian inference. One way we test ideas is by
testing as much of their deductive closure as possible: that is, all the
things that would be true if the idea was true. If that "big scary number" was
in any way significant, we'd expect a huge seasonal effect in the die-off,
which is not observed.

Furthermore, if temperature has a huge effect in the laboratory and none in
the field, there is something missing. Maybe that missing thing is pH, as the
article suggests, but note how the otherwise data-heavy account gives no
actual numbers on ocean acidification, merely telling us coyly that the oceans
have become less basic, not how big the change is? That's because the story is
really complicated and quite local--ocean pH varies a lot between locales, and
yet seafood manages to grow everywhere:
[http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016069)

There is also curiously little mention of the effects of sea-star over-
population on this outbreak of (likely) disease. Times were good for West
Coast sea-stars in the mid-2000's. I saw species I'd never observed in the
'80's or '90's. Population crashes, often due to disease, are not uncommon in
nature following population booms. This natural boom/crash cycle is mentioned
in passing, but not really given the attention it deserves. Deer populations
on Vancouver Island are booming right now too, and when they crash in a few
years it won't be due to climate change, although the specific causes may
remain mysterious.

So this could have been an interesting story on the difficulties of doing good
science in a complex natural setting. Instead it invoked the "climate change
scary!" meme that has infected virtually every story that has anything to do
with anything that happens on a scale larger than a single urban
neighbourhood. It does no particularly good service to science to say, "I'm
sure climate change is the cause but I can't prove it!" If you're sure, you're
not doing science: Bayesian reasoning does not produce certainty.

And being "sure" of something you don't have anything like sufficient evidence
for is not a good attitude for a scientist to have, and putting it on display
like this emboldens those who believe that rather than being an alternative to
faith, science is just another kind of faith (which it is not:
[http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1331](http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1331))

------
pchristensen
Best video I've seen, comparing a dive site from Seattle in 2007, 2013, 2014

[http://www.diverlaura.me/before-and-after-seastar-wasting-
di...](http://www.diverlaura.me/before-and-after-seastar-wasting-disease/)

~~~
pyre
Both videos: "This video has been removed by user."

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idealform01
good article, i especially liked the "its anus faces the heavens" bit. i must
admit that i was wondering.

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awjr
So if starfish eat pretty much anything that filters water (muscles), what
effect would the Fukushima Accident (March 11th, 2011) have on their radiation
levels? Could such an event have triggered a mutation in the virus or could
the starfish be hypersensitive to slightly higher background radiation?

~~~
arethuza
Perhaps worth noting that the amount of radiation being leaking from Fukushima
are actually pretty small (0.3 terabecquerels per month) when compared to
historical H-bomb tests (~100,000 TBq):

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24100-should-
fukushima...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24100-should-fukushimas-
radioactive-water-be-dumped-at-sea.html#.VHMhPMkWv0U)

Edit: There was even one, relatively small, nuclear test about 500 miles from
San Diego:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wigwam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wigwam)

