In an old industrial warehouse, Tiffany Rudek leaned into a chest-high tank. Using a laminated card, she gently pried a red-speckled sea star from the enclosure’s bright blue walls.
The starfish was reluctant, clinging with its tiny, tubular feet. “It’s delicate to move them,” said Rudek, an aquarist at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Reaching underwater, she unstuck it for its own good.
It was bath time for the sick sea star.
This leather star, like many starfish species, is supposed to have five arms. This one has four. A tuft of pale, spongy tissue is all that is left where its limb came off.
“Sometimes animals need a little help,” she said.
For the past decade, a mysterious illness has spread along the Pacific Coast, causing sea stars — more commonly known as starfish — to literally melt into goo. The outbreak has hit starfish from southern Alaska to Baja California in Mexico, decimating more than a dozen species. The ailment is so pervasive among the invertebrates in the region that even specimens in aquariums contract it. Some die within hours of showing symptoms.
No one is sure where the outbreak came from. And no one can agree on what exactly is causing it — whether the source is a virus, bacteria, a change in the environment or something else entirely.
But many biologists are sure of one thing: The disease, dubbed sea star wasting syndrome, threatens to drive some starfish to extinction and hints at deeper problems in Earth’s seas.
Tiffany Rudek, an aquarist, rehabilitates sea stars at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Ore. (Amanda Lucier for The Washington Post)
(Amanda Lucier for The Washington Post)
The disease isn’t just a disaster for sea stars. The crash of starfish populations is poised to make climate change even worse for other creatures on Earth by upending ecosystems that are home to hundreds of other species and crucial for keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere. Without starfish to prey on them, hungry sea urchins are devouring huge underwater kelp jungles that store carbon.
Scientists call it the largest known outbreak of any disease among marine animals to date, killing billions of individual sea stars. Now animal handlers at the Oregon Coast Aquarium have developed what they say is a novel treatment for the syndrome, in the hopes of someday rescuing and restoring starfish numbers.
Bending over, Rudek scooped the red-speckled leather star into a clear bucket and swirled an inky concoction meant to kill parasites that prey on its weakened flesh.
Resting on the bottom of the bucket, the star splayed its four remaining limbs against the container’s walls. The disinfected animal, Rudek said, was resting.
“It makes them feel better,” she said. “They’re like, ‘Oh, thank goodness, all of this ick on my body is now gone.’”
It sounds like a horror movie.
The first symptoms seem mild. A sea star may look a little flattened. Not as puffy as it once was.
Then it will curl up, twisting one arm over another in a vain effort to protect itself from some phantom it cannot see.
A sunflower sea star in its tank. (Amanda Lucier for The Washington Post)
As the wasting disease progresses, a sea star develops white, oozing lesions. Its arms detach from its body — and the zombie limbs walk away on their own to die. In the end, all that is left is a slimy pile of tiny bones and deteriorated flesh.
The outbreak was first identified in 2013 in Washington before scientists spotted melting stars up and down the coast. For a while, the epidemic appeared to spare Oregon. Then in early 2014, a visitor came into the Oregon Coast Aquarium in a panic.
“She said, ‘I need a marine biologist,’” recalled Evonne Mochon Collura, a sea jelly specialist and assistant curator of fish and invertebrates. The resident saw a tide pool with a galaxy of gooey stars.
Doug Batson, a diver with the aquarium in Newport, confirmed their worst fears after seeing something akin to a crime scene while diving in the nearby Yaquina Bay that spring. “One arm totally in the middle of nowhere off by itself,” he said. “And another arm a few feet away from that. And then another arm, like a breadcrumb trail.”
Situated along the Yaquina River, Newport is a coastal fishing town of 10,000 that attracts seafood-loving tourists. Because the aquarium pumps in saltwater for its tanks, whatever agent is infecting sea stars outside could infiltrate the exhibits.
Staff soon spotted a small lesion on a starfish in the aquarium’s touch pool where visitors can get a hands-on experience with sea life. “And we just went, ‘Oh, it’s here,’” Mochon Collura said.
At first, the aquarium tried treating its melting starfish with antibiotics. In some cases, the stars bounced back. In others, they got worse. “We were really having mixed success,” Mochon Collura said. “You start looking for something else.”
A self-described obsessive, Rudek began poring over papers on starfish biology. “I can’t let it rest. If something is sick, I have to know what is wrong with it and I have to know what we can do for it.”
The aquarium closed its doors to the public for five months near the start of the covid-19 pandemic. With the crowds at home dealing with their own disease outbreak, Rudek had more time to observe the sick sea stars.
She began asking herself and others at the aquarium: What if they treated starfish with wasting disease like someone with a cold, and gave them vitamins?
The aquarium’s sea star quarantine center is a retrofitted warehouse tucked away from the public behind the 1.3-million-gallon deep-sea exhibit building that once housed Keiko, the orca from “Free Willy.”
In the starfish tank were a group of four ochre sea stars pulled from exhibits after showing signs of wasting. A sick specimen from a tiny, ruby-red species called blood stars floated in a plastic pasta strainer. “He’s little, and we didn’t want the other stars to crawl over him,” Rudek said.
A maze of pipes, pumps, filters and chillers loaded the water with calcium, magnesium and other minerals, a mixture that acts like a multivitamin supplement for the starfish. They also lower the water’s temperature and acidity to make the starfish as comfortable as possible.
Rudek adds a treatment to the water. (Amanda Lucier for The Washington Post)
Sea stars in the rehabilitation tank at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. (Amanda Lucier for The Washington Post)
The disease’s root cause is still not fully understood, Rudek said. “But we know that stress is a factor.”
Another is opportunistic parasites that feast on flesh weakened by the wasting disease. Rudek regularly dipped the stars in an iodine solution to kill a group of parasites called ciliates that scar the skin and slow the healing process.
After giving the speckled, four-legged star its disinfecting iodine bath, Rudek placed it back into the tank with the rest of the starfish, holding it against the wall. It took only about 25 seconds for the invertebrate to get its grip, a relatively short reaction time that indicates it is on the mend. As a species, leather stars tend to weather the wasting disease well.
“That’s a really good sign,” Rudek said.
Then she poured a vial of a white probiotic solution around the starfish to restore beneficial bacteria that help keep infection away. The entire protocol is meant to boost their immune system response to the disease.
It is early days, but it appears to be working. So far, the aquarium has treated 17 starfish across seven species, with 15 fully recovering.
The starfish was reluctant, clinging with its tiny, tubular feet. “It’s delicate to move them,” said Rudek, an aquarist at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Reaching underwater, she unstuck it for its own good.
It was bath time for the sick sea star.
This leather star, like many starfish species, is supposed to have five arms. This one has four. A tuft of pale, spongy tissue is all that is left where its limb came off.
“Sometimes animals need a little help,” she said.
For the past decade, a mysterious illness has spread along the Pacific Coast, causing sea stars — more commonly known as starfish — to literally melt into goo. The outbreak has hit starfish from southern Alaska to Baja California in Mexico, decimating more than a dozen species. The ailment is so pervasive among the invertebrates in the region that even specimens in aquariums contract it. Some die within hours of showing symptoms.
No one is sure where the outbreak came from. And no one can agree on what exactly is causing it — whether the source is a virus, bacteria, a change in the environment or something else entirely.
But many biologists are sure of one thing: The disease, dubbed sea star wasting syndrome, threatens to drive some starfish to extinction and hints at deeper problems in Earth’s seas.
Tiffany Rudek, an aquarist, rehabilitates sea stars at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Ore. (Amanda Lucier for The Washington Post)
(Amanda Lucier for The Washington Post)
The disease isn’t just a disaster for sea stars. The crash of starfish populations is poised to make climate change even worse for other creatures on Earth by upending ecosystems that are home to hundreds of other species and crucial for keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere. Without starfish to prey on them, hungry sea urchins are devouring huge underwater kelp jungles that store carbon.
Scientists call it the largest known outbreak of any disease among marine animals to date, killing billions of individual sea stars. Now animal handlers at the Oregon Coast Aquarium have developed what they say is a novel treatment for the syndrome, in the hopes of someday rescuing and restoring starfish numbers.
Bending over, Rudek scooped the red-speckled leather star into a clear bucket and swirled an inky concoction meant to kill parasites that prey on its weakened flesh.
Resting on the bottom of the bucket, the star splayed its four remaining limbs against the container’s walls. The disinfected animal, Rudek said, was resting.
“It makes them feel better,” she said. “They’re like, ‘Oh, thank goodness, all of this ick on my body is now gone.’”
It sounds like a horror movie.
The first symptoms seem mild. A sea star may look a little flattened. Not as puffy as it once was.
Then it will curl up, twisting one arm over another in a vain effort to protect itself from some phantom it cannot see.
A sunflower sea star in its tank. (Amanda Lucier for The Washington Post)
As the wasting disease progresses, a sea star develops white, oozing lesions. Its arms detach from its body — and the zombie limbs walk away on their own to die. In the end, all that is left is a slimy pile of tiny bones and deteriorated flesh.
The outbreak was first identified in 2013 in Washington before scientists spotted melting stars up and down the coast. For a while, the epidemic appeared to spare Oregon. Then in early 2014, a visitor came into the Oregon Coast Aquarium in a panic.
“She said, ‘I need a marine biologist,’” recalled Evonne Mochon Collura, a sea jelly specialist and assistant curator of fish and invertebrates. The resident saw a tide pool with a galaxy of gooey stars.
Doug Batson, a diver with the aquarium in Newport, confirmed their worst fears after seeing something akin to a crime scene while diving in the nearby Yaquina Bay that spring. “One arm totally in the middle of nowhere off by itself,” he said. “And another arm a few feet away from that. And then another arm, like a breadcrumb trail.”
Situated along the Yaquina River, Newport is a coastal fishing town of 10,000 that attracts seafood-loving tourists. Because the aquarium pumps in saltwater for its tanks, whatever agent is infecting sea stars outside could infiltrate the exhibits.
Staff soon spotted a small lesion on a starfish in the aquarium’s touch pool where visitors can get a hands-on experience with sea life. “And we just went, ‘Oh, it’s here,’” Mochon Collura said.
At first, the aquarium tried treating its melting starfish with antibiotics. In some cases, the stars bounced back. In others, they got worse. “We were really having mixed success,” Mochon Collura said. “You start looking for something else.”
A self-described obsessive, Rudek began poring over papers on starfish biology. “I can’t let it rest. If something is sick, I have to know what is wrong with it and I have to know what we can do for it.”
The aquarium closed its doors to the public for five months near the start of the covid-19 pandemic. With the crowds at home dealing with their own disease outbreak, Rudek had more time to observe the sick sea stars.
She began asking herself and others at the aquarium: What if they treated starfish with wasting disease like someone with a cold, and gave them vitamins?
The aquarium’s sea star quarantine center is a retrofitted warehouse tucked away from the public behind the 1.3-million-gallon deep-sea exhibit building that once housed Keiko, the orca from “Free Willy.”
In the starfish tank were a group of four ochre sea stars pulled from exhibits after showing signs of wasting. A sick specimen from a tiny, ruby-red species called blood stars floated in a plastic pasta strainer. “He’s little, and we didn’t want the other stars to crawl over him,” Rudek said.
A maze of pipes, pumps, filters and chillers loaded the water with calcium, magnesium and other minerals, a mixture that acts like a multivitamin supplement for the starfish. They also lower the water’s temperature and acidity to make the starfish as comfortable as possible.
Rudek adds a treatment to the water. (Amanda Lucier for The Washington Post)
Sea stars in the rehabilitation tank at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. (Amanda Lucier for The Washington Post)
The disease’s root cause is still not fully understood, Rudek said. “But we know that stress is a factor.”
Another is opportunistic parasites that feast on flesh weakened by the wasting disease. Rudek regularly dipped the stars in an iodine solution to kill a group of parasites called ciliates that scar the skin and slow the healing process.
After giving the speckled, four-legged star its disinfecting iodine bath, Rudek placed it back into the tank with the rest of the starfish, holding it against the wall. It took only about 25 seconds for the invertebrate to get its grip, a relatively short reaction time that indicates it is on the mend. As a species, leather stars tend to weather the wasting disease well.
“That’s a really good sign,” Rudek said.
Then she poured a vial of a white probiotic solution around the starfish to restore beneficial bacteria that help keep infection away. The entire protocol is meant to boost their immune system response to the disease.
It is early days, but it appears to be working. So far, the aquarium has treated 17 starfish across seven species, with 15 fully recovering.
