Lukas VFN 🇪🇺Apr 18, 2025

Highly endangered sunflower star finds refuge in Canadian fjords
https://phys.org/news/2025-04-highly-endangered-sunflower-star-refuge.html

Fjord oceanographic dynamics provide refuge for critically endangered #Pycnopodia helianthoides: Alyssa-Lois Madden Gehman et al. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2024.2770

"in the summer, there is a lot of glacial runoff, dumping a lot of really cold water into the #fjords. Then, because the #SeaStars do not like cold water, they go deeper. And that may be shielding them from #SeaStarWastingDisease"

Highly endangered sunflower star finds refuge in Canadian fjords

A team of oceanographers and marine biologists at the Hakai Institute, working with a colleague from the Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance, and another from the Institute of Ocean Sciences, all in Canada, has found that the highly endangered sunflower star, a type of sea star, has found some degree of refuge in Canadian fjords (spelled fiord in Canada).

Phys.org
Lukas VFN 🇪🇺Nov 10, 2024

Raising Hungry #SeaStar Babies Is No Cinch https://baynature.org/article/raising-hungry-sea-star-babies-is-no-cinch/

"Not so long ago, you could count on #pycnopodia to devour #PurpleUrchins and keep them from eating too much #kelp. A decade ago, the mysterious wasting disease began plaguing #SeaStars, right around the time that a #MarineHeatWave struck... In the absence of their primary predator, urchin populations exploded. Since then they have mown across the sea floor unhindered, leaving urchin barrens where #KelpForests once flourished."

Raising Hungry Sea Star Babies Is No Cinch - Bay Nature

Scientists want to reintroduce these many-armed roombas as a great help for kelp.

Bay Nature
Show threadAlice Dubiel 🔬💉🦠😷🌬☮️May 15, 2024
Apparently ochre stars are making a comeback, not (yet) to historic levels. Also sea stars spawn in the winter. #SeattleAquarium #pycnopodia #BeachNaturalists
Show threadAlice Dubiel 🔬💉🦠😷🌬☮️May 15, 2024
Sunflower stars, voracious predators, eat sea urchins. With the star population declining, urchins decimated the kelp forests along the #NorthPacific coast. This shift affected the deep intertidal ecosystem, making it difficult for juvenile fish to survive until they’re ready for the ocean, protecting bluffs from erosion, etc #pycnopodia #urchins #kelpforests The San Juan lab researchers found young stars could be more active in warmer waters and eat many more young urchins than adults.
Ross WhippoDec 1, 2022

Do you lie awake at night wondering about the indirect interactions between seastars and sea urchins? Me too!

Here are my thoughts on the matter in the latest 'Tide Bite' from the Friday Harbor Laboratories.

https://fhl.uw.edu/about/news-and-events/2022/11/23/tide-bite-december-2022/

#seastar #urchin #pycnopodia #kelp #ecology #MarineBiology #SalishSea

Tide Bite – December 2022