Starfish Wasting Syndrome Analysis

The ocean is a beautiful scenery and one creature that has brought beauty to it is the starfish. When in danger a starfish may drop off one of its legs to protect itself and it will regrow over months or even years. This amazing ability will not help them this time. Starfish are dying out due to the wasting syndrome that is believed to be caused by temperature changes in the water and if the starfish population continues to decrease then this will offset the food chain. The wasting syndrome is a disease that is killing off the starfishes, “researchers in Washington State first noticed signs of the so called ‘“wasting syndrome”’ in June 2013 during routine monitoring of [the] populations”(Scudellari, 2014, pg. 44-45). The wasting syndrome is where the starfish’s body is first drained of all its water (they have water instead of blood). Then, after it is drained of its water then the arms of the star start curl up and detach from the rocks. After that “white lesions appear, like festering canker sores” (Scudellari, 2014, pg. 44-45) and the major organs keeping the starfish alive explode and all the arms fall off, and the starfish dissolves into a gooey blob. This

Wasting syndrome is believed to be caused by a temperature change in water because “the last two big wasting incidents, in 1983-84 and 1997-98, were during El Niño years, when ocean waters were particularly warm” (Lunau, 2014, pg. 1). If the wasting syndrome is due to a change in water temperature, then other organisms are in major trouble because that means there will probably be more populations starting to die off and eventually go extinct. Sea stars in captivity are dying and it is still being questioned why. These stars have been in captivity in Vancouver and Seattle, which have maintained healthy starfish for over forty years. These tanks keep a constant temperature, but contain ocean water that is being circulated through the