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Sea Stars Make a Comeback After Mysterious 'Goo' Disease Killed Millions
LiveScience ^ | December 28, 2017 | Laura Geggel

Posted on 12/28/2017 5:29:22 PM PST by nickcarraway

For the past four years, a mysterious syndrome has been killing millions of sea stars along the West Coast, turning the five-armed critters into piles of goo. But now, the sea stars appear to be making a comeback, according to news reports.

In Southern California and elsewhere, the palm-size sea stars are showing up in record numbers, compared with the past few years, The Orange County Register reportedon Tuesday (Dec. 26).

"They are coming back, big time," Darryl Deleske, an aquarist for the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro, told The Orange County Register. "It’s a huge difference … A couple of years ago, you wouldn’t find any. I dove all the way as far as Canada, specifically looking for sea stars, and found not a single one." [In Photos: Sick Sea Stars Turn to Goo]

For the past four years, a mysterious syndrome has been killing millions of sea stars along the West Coast, turning the five-armed critters into piles of goo. But now, the sea stars appear to be making a comeback, according to news reports.

In Southern California and elsewhere, the palm-size sea stars are showing up in record numbers, compared with the past few years, The Orange County Register reportedon Tuesday (Dec. 26).

"They are coming back, big time," Darryl Deleske, an aquarist for the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro, told The Orange County Register. "It’s a huge difference … A couple of years ago, you wouldn’t find any. I dove all the way as far as Canada, specifically looking for sea stars, and found not a single one." [In Photos: Sick Sea Stars Turn to Goo]

(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...


TOPICS: Local News; Outdoors; Pets/Animals
KEYWORDS: starfish
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To: nickcarraway

Years ago my great aunt owned some good sized oyster beds on Hood Canal (WA), and she would have us kids gather up all the starfish we could at low tide and put them on her compost pile.


21 posted on 12/28/2017 6:36:29 PM PST by dainbramaged (Get out of my country now)
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To: nickcarraway

Now, I know you’re not the only starfish in the sea
If I never hear your name again, it’s all the same to me

And I think it’s gonna be alright
Yeah, the worst is over now
The mornin’ sun is shinin’ like a red rubber ball


22 posted on 12/28/2017 6:38:51 PM PST by null and void (The internet gave everyone a mouth, it gave no one a brain)
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To: null and void
The Star Thrower from The Unexpected Universe, by Loren Eiseley
PART I (from Eisley.org

I have caught a glimpse of what man may be, along an endless wave-beaten coast at dawn. It began on the beaches of Costabel. I was an inhumanly stripped skeleton without voice, without hope, wandering alone upon the shores of the world. I was devoid of pity, because pity implies hope. In a dingy restaurant I had heard a woman say, “In Costabel, my father reads a goose bone for the weather.” Perhaps that was why I had finally found myself in Costabel, why all men are destined at some time to arrive there as I did.

I concealed myself beneath a fisherman’s cap and sunglasses, so that I looked like everyone else on the beaches of Costabel, which are littered with the debris of life. There, along the strip of wet sand that marks the tide, death walks hugely and in many forms. The sea casts them repeatedly back upon the shore. The tiny breathing pores of starfish are stuffed with sand. The rising sun shrivels their unprotected bodies. The endless war is soundless. Nothing screams but the gulls. In the night, torches bobbing like fireflies along the beach, are the sign of the professional shellers. Greedy madness sweeps over the competing collectors, hurrying along with bundles of gathered starfish that will be slowly cooked and dissolved in the outdoor kettles provided by the resort hotels for the cleaning of specimens. It was there that I met the star thrower.

As the sound of the sea became heavier and more menacing, I rounded a bluff into the full blast of the offshore wind. Long-limbed starfish were strewn everywhere, sprawling where the waves had tossed them as though showered down through the night sky. The sun behind me was pressing upward at the horizon’s rim ~ an ominous red glare amidst the tumbling blackness of the clouds. Ahead of me, over the projecting point, a gigantic rainbow of incredible perfection had sprung shimmering into existence. Toward its foot I discerned a human figure standing, as it seemed to me, within the rainbow. He was gazing fixedly at something in the sand.

He stooped and flung an object beyond the breaking surf. I labored another half a mile toward him and by the time I reached him, kneeling again, the rainbow had receded ahead of us. In a pool of sand and silt a starfish had thrust its arms up stiffly and was holding its body away from the stifling mud. “It’s still alive,” I ventured. “Yes,” he said, and with a quick, yet gentle movement, he picked up the star and spun it over my head and far out into the sea. “It may live if the offshore pull is strong enough,” he said.

In a sudden embarrassment for words I said, “Do you collect shells?” “Only ones like this,” he said softly, gesturing amidst the wreckage of the shore, “and only for the living.” He stooped again, and skipped another star neatly across the water. “The stars,” he said, “throw well. One can help them.” He looked full at me with a faint question kindling in his eyes. “No, I do not collect,” I said uncomfortably, the wind beating at my garments. “neither the living nor the dead. I gave it up a long time ago. Death is the only successful collector.” I nodded and walked away, leaving him there with the great rainbow ranging up the sky behind him.

I turned as I neared a bend in the coast and saw him toss another star, skimming it skillfully far out over the ravening and tumultuous water. For a moment, in the changing light, the Sower appeared magnified, with the posture of a god. But, my cold world-shriveling view began its inevitable circling in my skull. He is just a man, I considered sharply, bringing my thought to rest. The star thrower is a man, and death is running more fleet than he, and along every seabeach in the world.

23 posted on 12/28/2017 6:57:36 PM PST by neverevergiveup
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To: nickcarraway
I'm not surprised one damned bit. Humans have been trying to kill cockroaches for hundreds of years and they keep springing back in spite of whatever poisons we throw at them. I'm not saying starfish are dirty like cockroaches but I am saying that they have the same breading strategy. Every starfish releases millions of eggs and not one of them receive any parental care. This mass breeding/spawning strategy means that there will always be at least a few individuals in every generation that have some immunity to whatever is killing the rest of the species.

Just to drive the point home, each arm of the starfish has a gonad and every individual starfish has at least 5 gonads each.

My prediction is that when humans are all dead and gone, there will still be starfish.

24 posted on 12/28/2017 7:43:17 PM PST by WMarshal (John McCain is the turd in America's punch bowl. McLame cannot even fake an injury.)
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To: dragnet2
“Sea Stars? People on the west coast have called them Starfish for a really long time. Must be an east coast thing.”

No, it's really just the same phenomenon of saying Pluto is not a planet. A while back a cabal of cucked “ biologists” decided that the term “sea stars” was more accurate than “starfish” because starfish technically are not “fish”.

I call it “virtue-signaling taxonomy”.

25 posted on 12/28/2017 7:46:38 PM PST by WMarshal (John McCain is the turd in America's punch bowl. McLame cannot even fake an injury.)
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To: WMarshal

Jungle, rain forest, I get it.


26 posted on 12/28/2017 7:52:43 PM PST by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: nickcarraway

My sister-in-law just told me on Christmas day that their new pup had pulled three dried starfish Christmas tree ornaments off the tree and Munch them down. Nice to know they’re not toxic the dog is doing fine.


27 posted on 12/28/2017 8:04:22 PM PST by DAC21
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To: atc23

“the Abalone are really doing well too ”

So....where can I get some?

L


28 posted on 12/28/2017 8:06:56 PM PST by Lurker (President Trump isn't our last chance. President Trump is THEIR last chance.)
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To: dragnet2

Nope, we call them starfish as well.
Must be a journalism thingy to show us how smart they are


29 posted on 12/28/2017 9:13:29 PM PST by Keyhopper (Indians had bad immigration laws)
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To: nickcarraway

I wonder what could cause cell walls to decay like that? Could it be little neutrons blasting them to pieces?

We will never know. But if you have eyes, it can be figured out.


30 posted on 12/28/2017 9:44:39 PM PST by Vermont Lt (Burn. It. Down.)
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To: atc23

Sounds like a great day.


31 posted on 12/28/2017 9:47:11 PM PST by Yaelle
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To: DAC21
Must have tasted like salty pretzels to the pooch. Glad s/he is OK.

When we kept lobster tramps [here on the east coast] sea stars & spider crabs were a pain in the neck; they were always after the bait in the traps. Some hauls, that was all that was in the trap.


32 posted on 12/28/2017 9:59:32 PM PST by Daffynition (The New PTSD: PRESIDENT-Trump Stress Disorder - The LSN didnÂ’t make Trump, so they can't break him)
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To: Vermont Lt
In Long Island Sound, we have a 95% death rate of lobster; *they* don't know what is killing them.

The lobster industry in LIS is done. Gone. Has been for years now. It's a shame.

The lobster look like the deer who have chronic waste disease. Yuck!


33 posted on 12/28/2017 10:06:00 PM PST by Daffynition (The New PTSD: PRESIDENT-Trump Stress Disorder - The LSN didnÂ’t make Trump, so they can't break him)
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To: nickcarraway
According to Wikipedia, there are about 1,500 different species of Starfish.

Thus, referring to a "come-back" of "Sea Stars" is about as vague and confusing as writing about a "resurgence" of "Mammals."

The author of the article deserves to have his journalist's credentials revoked.

Regards,

34 posted on 12/29/2017 1:32:58 AM PST by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: COBOL2Java

my first thought http://hark.com/clips/wskxfqddwj-spongebob-laughs


35 posted on 12/29/2017 3:10:19 AM PST by SMGFan (Sarah Michelle Gellar is on twitter @SarahMGellar)
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To: neverevergiveup

Thanks


36 posted on 12/29/2017 7:10:28 AM PST by null and void (It is not trends but choices that that matter most at the key moments of history)
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To: alexander_busek

I hear mammals are really poised to make a comeback.

2018 may well be the year of the bipedal mammal.


37 posted on 12/29/2017 7:18:39 AM PST by T-Bone Texan
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To: atc23

I recently saw a red starfish among the rocks in the shallow water of our gangway at the marina in Ventura. Hadn’t seen one in years.


38 posted on 12/29/2017 7:26:44 AM PST by sheana
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