Sometimes the only word that will do is a bad word. I generally try not to use a lot of bad language because on the occasions when I do swear I want my f-bombs to really mean something. Late this afternoon I was on my way out of the lab when I made a quick…
Tag: sea star wasting
The perfect storm
Although the last thing that any of us marine invertebrate biologists want to see again is a wasted sea star, the syndrome has once again been making its presence felt at the marine lab. It has been almost two years since I documented the initial outbreak, and while nobody is convinced that it has entirely…
I’m famous!
Well, fame is all relative, right? VICE magazine’s May 2015 issue is focused on environmental crises of various kinds. One of the feature articles is on sea star wasting, which I’ve blogged about before, beginning in September 2013. The author of the VICE article, Nathaniel Rich, came out to the marine lab and interviewed me…
Wasting leather (star)
Until recently I hadn’t closely observed what it looks like when a leather star (Dermasterias imbricata) succumbs to wasting syndrome. When I had the outbreak of plague in my table almost 18 months ago now, my only leather star was fine one day and decomposing the next, so I didn’t get to see what actually happened…
Finally! A cause for sea star wasting syndrome
At last, a publication on the causative agent for sea star wasting syndrome! Several co-authors have written a paper that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), in which the culprit was identified as a densovirus. The Smithsonian wrote up a nice article summarizing the findings here. While it remains…
The road to recovery, perhaps?
“Perhaps” being the operative word here. I was up at Davenport Landing the other day to do some collecting, and saw some healthy stars. Alas, no pictures, as I’m not coordinated enough to do photography and collecting on the same trip. But here’s what I saw: 5 healthy Pisaster ochraceus stars. This was the first…
Wasting disease in subtidal stars
Since my earlier posts on Pisaster wasting disease in the lab, I’ve been contacted by a couple of divers who have seen afflicted stars on their dives in Monterey Bay. They have both graciously given me permission to post their photos, which clearly demonstrate that Pisaster and other stars are being stricken subtidally as well as…
The last days
Well, it looks like the end is indeed nigh. That last Pisaster, for whom I held out unreasonable hope for so long, seems to be on its way out. Today it has lost its last two arms, leaving a central disc attached to a single arm: As bad as it looks, it could be a…
Well, maybe not
Against all odds, my last Pisaster star is (literally) hanging in there. It hasn’t lost any more arms in the past 24 hours, and by the standards of the past two weeks that’s a rousing success. And it hasn’t lost the turgor pressure of its body, so it isn’t as limp as the others were…
And then there were . . . none
The last of my Pisaster ochraceus stars waited until today, three whole days after all of its conspecifics had died, to start ripping itself into pieces. This is the sight that greeted me when I checked on my animals this morning: I spent some time examining the severed arm because it is freakishly fascinating to…