
The Ecologist Who Threw Starfish - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/37/currents/the-ecologist-who-threw-starfish-rp
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eosrei
Robert Paine showed the importance of predators in maintaining an ecosystem.
The same effects are occurring at scale across the entire California coast
right now. Massive numbers of Sea stars (starfish) have died[1] due to "Sea
star wasting disease"[2] which is caused by Sea Star Associated Densovirus
(SSaDV)[3].

No sea stars causes huge numbers of sea urchins which causes the disappearance
of kelp forests. My favorite kelp forest to scuba dive in the Monterey Bay is
now an urchin barren[4]. No fish, no sea otters, just sea urchins. I was there
a month ago and it is gone.

[1]: [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/150401-urchins-
se...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/150401-urchins-sea-stars-
monterey-bay-california-animals/)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_star_wasting_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_star_wasting_disease)

[3]: [http://phys.org/news/2014-11-densovirus-devastating-sea-
star...](http://phys.org/news/2014-11-densovirus-devastating-sea-star-
disease.html)

[4]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urchin_barren](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urchin_barren)

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gr3yh47
Unfortunately there is a glaring omission in the article.

Did he throw them like a frisbee, boomerang, baseball? some other way?

Disappointing to say the least.

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dnetesn
Watch the video

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sandworm101
How quickly did the starfish return? He only removed them every other week.
How many needed to be removed each time? If he had to remove a similar number
each week as he did on the first, the message is that the removal isn't
effective. If they were coming back within days/hours his results might be
coincidental. Shorelines are dynamic places. Even with a control area a few
meters away, he might have been witness to a natural change at that location.

Also, pity the poor animals on the sharp end of "kick it and see"
experimentation. This is not something to be applied to what my land use prof
called "cute cuddly megafauna".

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eridius
Did you actually read the whole article? That was just the first experiment.
The keystone species hypothesis has been confirmed time and time again all
across the globe, and it's a widely-accepted theory these days (to the extent
where I, someone who's never studied ecology, already knew the theory and was
surprised that it was developed so recently and was controversial when it was
proposed).

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sandworm101
I don't debate the keystone species concept, just the methodology of this
particular experiment. If this was new science today, I'd probably be on the
side of people ripping it apart and dismissing any results as untrustworthy.

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ktRolster
If you want all the details, maybe you should read the actual study before
criticizing someone who did a good study, but you're too lazy to realize it.

