Starfish wasting disease appears worldwide.

At UC, Santa Cruz, amateur tidepool naturalists and credentialed biologists have jointly tracked the starfish pandemic, and the monitoring has been not only all along the West Coast, but also on the East Coast of the U. S., and worldwide

An October, 2013, update on the University of California, Santa Cruz, website stated:

Signs of sea star wasting disease have been popping up on both the East and West Coasts of the United States, as well as reports globally. On the West Coast, sea star wasting has been observed as far north as Southeast Alaska, and as far south as Orange County, California. To date, we have received reports of at least 10 species of sea stars showing signs of infection. Reports of sea star disease and mortality on the East Coast began showing up in articles during July of this year. On the West Coast, sea star wasting was first documented in June (although see Bates et al. for 2008 event), and by September observations were much more widespread, with accounts of diseased, dying and dead sea stars from numerous locations along the West Coast.

The first evidence of a possible wasting event came in June when Long-Term Monitoring sites in Washington (monitored by Olympic National Park) recorded diseased stars with percent affected rates between 3-26%. Symptoms of wasting disease in a few Pisaster ochraceus were also noted in August at an intertidal Biodiversity site in Southeast Alaska. Articles from British Columbia, Canada report sightings of dozens of dead sea stars (notably Pycnopodia helianthoides) beginning in September, not far from Vancouver. One report from Vashon Island in Puget Sound indicates signs of wasting in Pycnopodia helianthoides from March of this year. This is the earliest account we have on the West Coast for 2013. From Friday Harbor Laboratories, we have received a report of diseased Henricia spp. and Evasterias troschelii at the southern tip of San Juan Island. In Oregon, we saw no obvious signs of wasting sea stars during Long-Term Monitoring surveys in May-August. Word-of-mouth accounts indicate that there may be wasting occurring at some sites in Oregon, and we hope to have more information from that section of coast soon.

Amateur naturalists who need assistance identifying species of starfish, or who wish to share their findings, need only visit the UC, Santa Cruz, website, at this location.

The UC, Santa Cruz website contains pictures of various starfish species and of the different forms of wasting. It provides instruction on how to observe, including how to look for signs of recovery of, the decimated starfish population.

The website calls for amateur and professional participation in monitoring the situation:

Please continue to submit observations after spending time diving or tidepooling. We are constantly updating our website with the latest reports, and will update the map on a regular basis. Please remember to fill out a log even if you search and only find healthy sea stars, or no sea stars! This information is just as valuable as observations of diseased individuals.

In addition, we are considering the development of a mobile app that will provide educational information about sea stars and the wasting disease, as well as ID guides and survey protocols. This mobile app will be designed for Android and IOS platforms. We would greatly appreciate your input on the utility of this app and have put together a brief survey to gauge potential users’ interest. The survey can be found here.

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