The scene begins with a young man, watching the shipwrecked sea stars splayed along miles of coastline. He notices an old man rapidly picking up the dying sea stars and tossing them back into the water. Confused, the young man asks him why he is participating in such a useless task. The old man replies with a concerned tone, stating that the tide is going out and if he doesn’t throw all of the sea stars back into the water, they will perish. The young boy laughs at the old man’s futile mission. After all, there are thousands of sea stars along the coastline and the old man can’t possibly make a difference. Despite the young man’s negative spirits, the old man smiles and continues to throw another sea star into the water.
“It made a difference to that one.”
When I was in high school, my principal would tell us the well-known “starfish story” on a yearly basis and it never got old. Since I’m from a small coastal town, it seemed fitting to learn from stories with a nautical theme. The thing that always amazes me about sea stars is their impeccable determination. As the tide rolls in, they suction themselves to their rocky intertidal habitat while the waves crash down on their bodies. The life of sea stars themselves offer an infectious example of resilience for mankind.
There are only two aspects of the starfish story that I don’t like. First of all — its name. Starfish is a misnomer because these organisms are not fish. They belong to the echinoderm phylum that consists of other organisms such as sea urchins. Second, the world is a lot more concerned about these fantastic keystone species than represented in the story. People spend their lives researching these Patrick Star lookalikes.
Nowadays, sea star research is a hot topic.
From Alaska to California, the sunflower sea star, as well as 10 other species, are melting at an exponential rate. These prominent rocky intertidal keystone species’ limbs are disintegrating and turning into piles of white goo.
If you had the perspective of the young man from the story, then you’d view these marine biologists’ research as futile as well. But I mean, who cares if some sea stars die? It’s not like they’re people.
It’s not just some sea stars. It’s a lot. The number of sea stars that have shared the same fate of the Wicked Witch of the West has not been completely quantified, but it’s a number that is getting larger every day.
When I say sea star, you’re probably thinking of the classic sea star with five arms. Well, I have an interesting factoid for you. Marine biologists are heavily focusing on a specific species, the sunflower sea star. As the largest sea star in the world with an arm span of one meter, they’re pivotal deciders of the health of an ecosystem. The sunflower sea star has 15 to 24 arms that spread out like the sun’s rays.
Although there aren’t any clear causes of this mysterious die-off of these majestic organisms, no possibilities have been ruled out. Ocean acidification, climate change and even radiation exposure from Fukushima have been considered. This horrific phenomenon has been heavily noticed on the western coast, but it’s been observed on the eastern coast in locations from Maine to New Jersey. These pleasant echinoderms live in a variety of aquatic locations such as the tropics, cold water and deep ocean. So the cold water sea stars aren’t too happy about humans speeding up the warming of their one and only habitat: the ocean.
It’s been noted to marine biologists that over time, some sea stars become too bruised, dry and damaged and they undergo something called “wasting syndrome.” I can assure you that this melting phenomenon is beyond wasting syndrome. Marine biologists and scuba divers noted that sea star limbs and oral discs were spread all over the place in some areas — a truly worrying scene. Either it’s a mere coincidence that every sea star along the coasts are all dying at the same time from damage overtime or something fishy is going on in these waters. No matter the cause of this barbaric die-off, something must be done. In fact, the state of California generously allocated $50,000 to sea star experts doing research at California state universities to find the culprit behind this mayhem.
As I’ve mentioned before, sea stars are keystone species. The term keystone species defines a species that plays a pivotal role in maintaining an ecosystem. In some rocky intertidal zones on the west coast, nearly all of the sea stars in some locations along the west coast have died off. Sea stars are known for their ability to control mussel populations. Without the sea stars regulating the mussel population, the rest of the ecosystem goes unchecked.
Why is this a bad thing? Well, an excess of any species in the wild isn’t a good thing. The proliferation of mussels will deteriorate kelp populations. This eliminates a large portion of hiding spaces for fish from voracious predators and also reduces the amount of marine plants that protect coastal areas from flooding. Basically, the rapid deaths of sea stars doesn’t only have drastic affects upon its own ecosystem, it depreciates surrounding ecosystems as well.
Instead of acting like the young man from the Starfish Story, we need to be like the old man. We only have one Earth and each sea star counts.
Jennifer Ruth is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences studying environmental analysis and policy. She can be reached at jenruth@bu.edu.
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“Nuclear Energy is Safe!” “Nuclear Energy is Safe!”
…as the Pacific dies from a single plant failure, Fukishima. Of course no one will be blamed as blame can only be assigned to victims, the poor and protestors since those groups obviously cause all our problems and run the world.