Don't waste it
Like bronze bells being hit with a soft mallet, my alarm rang me to consciousness. 5:30 am. Rolling over, I was pleasantly surprised to find the sun already streaming through my blinds. It was bound to be a good day. I drove to the lab in leggings and a fleece, then pulled on rain pants and thick socks at my desk. Hair up. Boots on. Show time.
The morning's mission was a survey of Pisaster ochraceus, the ochre sea star, to assess the extent and severity of sea star wasting syndrome in Coos Bay. Not familiar with sea star wasting? It's a terrible disease, whereby sea stars suffer lesions, deteriorate, lose their arms, and disintegrate into a pile of goo. In the past few years, it's run rampant along the North American west coast. Check it out in more detail here and here.
The sad thing about sea star wasting is that for a long time, the cause of the disease was completely unknown. Scientists sampled the wasting stars but couldn't find any new or unusual pathogens. It appears now that the disease is caused by a densovirus that has been present and common in the environment for years, but which for some reason has recently turned nasty and virulent. A lot of questions remain, but there has been some progress in understanding the disease. Read more about recent discoveries here and here.
Our job today was to survey the sea stars in three quadrats at OIMB's Boathouse and record the size, color, and disease state of each. These same three quadrats have been sampled multiple times per year in order to establish a temporal trend in the prevelance of the disease. We went to the dock during the early morning low tide, slipped past a fence, powered through thick brush, climbed down a steep rock face, clambered over algal-covered cement pilings, and made our way to the quadrats.
Sometimes in the intertidal, you have to designate wave watchers to keep track of the ocean swell and make sure everyone stays safe, but the water was so calm today, we all got to work. We split into pairs - one to observe the stars, the other to record data - and crouched as low as we could to the concrete habitat. It was close-range, meticulous work.
Right away, I noticed a hollowed-out cave that had upwards of 20 sea stars crowded into it. There was no way I could measure and visually assess all of them in such a small space, so I pulled out a few stars and spread them on the ground. I called out to my partner: "Brown, 1 cm, 0" - a healthy juvenile star. "Purple, 5 cm, 2" - a pretty diseased adult, with lesions on multiple arms. Then the worst: "Purple, 7 cm, 4" - a dead star, mostly disintegrated, a sad sight to see.
Actually, we found a lot of healthy sea stars. There were numerous small juveniles, all perfectly intact and lesion-free. Every zero we recorded was an encouraging sign, a glimmer of hope that the next generation of stars might be healthier than the last. No matter what happens, we'll be back to monitor again in a few months. Long live Pisaster ochraceus!
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| Healthy sea stars, Pisaster ochraceus |
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| A wasting sea star. In the words of my high school biology teacher, the immortal Lee James Koski, "That's a bad day in the hood." |
Our job today was to survey the sea stars in three quadrats at OIMB's Boathouse and record the size, color, and disease state of each. These same three quadrats have been sampled multiple times per year in order to establish a temporal trend in the prevelance of the disease. We went to the dock during the early morning low tide, slipped past a fence, powered through thick brush, climbed down a steep rock face, clambered over algal-covered cement pilings, and made our way to the quadrats.
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| OIMB faculty members Nora Terwilliger and Maya Wolf Watts surveying sea stars in close quarters. |
Right away, I noticed a hollowed-out cave that had upwards of 20 sea stars crowded into it. There was no way I could measure and visually assess all of them in such a small space, so I pulled out a few stars and spread them on the ground. I called out to my partner: "Brown, 1 cm, 0" - a healthy juvenile star. "Purple, 5 cm, 2" - a pretty diseased adult, with lesions on multiple arms. Then the worst: "Purple, 7 cm, 4" - a dead star, mostly disintegrated, a sad sight to see.
Actually, we found a lot of healthy sea stars. There were numerous small juveniles, all perfectly intact and lesion-free. Every zero we recorded was an encouraging sign, a glimmer of hope that the next generation of stars might be healthier than the last. No matter what happens, we'll be back to monitor again in a few months. Long live Pisaster ochraceus!
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