Return of the natives

When the most recent epidemic of seastar wasting syndrome (SSWS) began back in 2013, the forcipulate stars were the first to succumb. This group includes conspicuous members of intertidal and subtidal habitats, such as:

• Pisaster ochraceus — the intertidal ochre star
• Pisaster giganteus — the giant spined star, which lives in the low intertidal and subtidal
• Pycnopodia helianthoides — the sunflower star, a huge monster of the low intertidal and subtidal.

In the past year or so, I’ve noticed P. ochraceus making a comeback at local intertidal sites. At first I was seeing stars in the 2-3 cm size range, and now I’m regularly seeing hand-sized ones clinging to the rocks.

You read that right. 4 mm in diameter. This is the tiniest forcipulate star that I’ve ever been able to ID in the field with any certainty.

It seems pretty clear that the ochre stars, at least, are making a comeback. It’s likely that the larger ones are survivors of the SSWS plague. That little tiny one, though, may well be a post-SSWS recruit. Unfortunately we don’t know how fast they grow once they recruit to the benthos. We do know that when they recruit they’re about 500 µm in diameter, so even that little guy has grown a lot in however long it has been since it settled.

The really exciting news is that yesterday I saw my first P. giganteus since the SSWS outbreak began! I was up at Davenport Landing collecting sea urchins and saw this star in an urchin hole. The rock around here is a soft mudstone that is easily eroded. Urchins excavate holes by twisting their spines against the rock, and then live in them. Holes that are urchinless, for whatever reason, are quickly colonized by other organisms (including baby urchins).

For a sense of size, this urchin hole is about 8 cm in diameter. The star is sharing it with a small anemone, most likely Anthopleura elegantissima.

Pisaster giganteus generally occurs lower in the intertidal than P. ochraceus, and I wouldn’t expect to see it on a tide that isn’t at least as low as -0.8 ft. It isn’t as closely associated with mussel beds as P. ochraceus, either, because it lives lower in the intertidal. Fortunately, this week’s low tide series includes a few days with tides below -1.0 ft, and I’m going back out today. I’ll be keeping my eyes open for not only Pisaster stars, but also the Pycnopodia that disappeared a few years ago. Although Pycnopodia gets very large, I don’t expect to see any really big ones running across the intertidal. However, Pycnopodia juveniles would indicate at least the beginning of a possible population recovery  from the SSWS plague.

So, wish me luck and keep your fingers crossed!