Fish & Water - Sounds Wild
Sunflower Sea Star Decline

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Sunflower Sea Star Decline

It’s a minus tide on a rocky Alaska beach, and a big, striking sea star is inching through a tidepool it’s moving pretty fast for a sea star. It has 24 legs and is almost three feet in diameter – it’s a picno-podia, known to many as the sunflower sea star.

Sunflower sea stars are distinctive and colorful creatures found from Baja California to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. They are a keystone species in the marine environment; their favorite food is sea urchins, and by eating urchins, which feed heavily on kelp, sunflower sea stars protect kelp forests that support numerous other species, including many of commercial significance in Alaska.

In recent years, culminating in the early 2020s, Sea Star Wasting Syndrome killed a variety of sea star species on the west coast and sunflower sea stars were particularly hard hit. About 90% of the sunflower sea stars off the coast of California, Oregon, Washington and Brithish Columbia were killed. Unusually warm water in the Pacific coincided with the disease outbreak. Biologists are working to learn more about the disease and to monitor the recovery of sea stars along the Pacific Coast.