First, it appeared in 2013 in Anchorage and the Gulf of Alaska. Now, in late 2014, starfish wasting disease has hit Sitka Sound.

Anchorage and Kayak Island yielded diseased starfish in 2013.

In mid-2013, researchers from University of California, Santa Cruz, identified diseased starfish, also known as sea stars, while exploring Gulf of Alaska waters around Kayak Island, below Anchorage, Alaska.

Likewise, the Anchorage Museum identified eight diseased starfish in their exhibit in mid-2013, which were euthanized.

The discoveries caused scientists to re-evaluate a theory that the wasting disease was related in some way to warmer waters.

Starfish at the Anchorage Museum have shown signs of a wasting disease reported up and down the West Coast, and eight had to be euthanized last fall.

The creatures are dying of sea star wasting syndrome, an affliction that causes white lesions to develop on the starfish’s skin and an unnatural twisting of the arms, the Anchorage Daily News reported. The starfish die after losing their arms and their tissues soften.

Marine scientists say the disease is killing massive numbers of starfish colonies up and down the West Coast, and it has been observed as far south as San Diego.

Scientists don’t know how many of the tens of millions of starfish along the coast have the disease.

Pete Raimondi, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California in Santa Cruz, told the newspaper it may be in the tens of thousands to the low millions. The symptoms appear to be highly present among starfish in captivity, he added.

To read the full article, click here.

Sitka Sound now finds their starfish population under attack.

In the foregoing article, it almost seems the problem might have been abating. But in October, 2014, starfish wasting disease was found in Sitka Sound.

October 1, 2014… The Sitka Sound Science Center staff along with biologists from University of Alaska Southeast in Sitka have identified an outbreak of sea star wasting disease in Sitka Sound.

Evidence of this sea star wasting event was first found in long-term monitoring plots on the Olympic Coast in June of 2013 and similar wasting events were reported in July 2013 on the East Coast.

Since these initial outbreaks, sea star wasting disease has spanned the West Coast from Mexico to Alaska, now Sitka.

The Sitka Sound Science Center, in coordination with the University of California Santa Cruz’s Melissa Miner and Dr. Pete Raimondi, and local experts, Taylor White (SSSC) and Marnie Chapman (UAS) have been monitoring sea stars in Sitka Sound since 2011. In August of 2013 they discovered a handful of purple seastars (Pisaster ochraceus) at Kayak Island with white, degraded tissue on their rays, a sign of sea star wasting disease.

With the exception of a single cryptic species, the six armed star (Leptasterias spp), there was surprisingly little evidence of the disease during our 2014 annual resurvey in early September. Local divers and beachcombers did not report massive wasting events until early last week, when Patty Dick, a biology teacher at Blatchley Middle School, reported initial sightings of die-offs in Thomsen Harbor. For now, we can confirm mass die-off of sunflower stars. . .

You can see the rest of the above article, including pictures of starfish and wasting disease, here.

At these same times, concern has been mounting in Oregon, where researchers regularly gather to explore tidepools. See the next page for one Oregon community’s efforts to document the phenomenon.