A team led by researchers in British Columbia has solved the mystery of a severe disease, killing billions of maritime stars along the Pacific coast of North America, which is more than a decade after the death.
The lead author of a new study, Melani Pentis, recalls a moment of “not really not believing” when researchers found a stress of bacteria that were abundant in diseased marine stars and were absent in healthy people.
“My initial response was like,” okay, so I did something wrong, “he said.
Prantis said that the team spent months in an attempt to reject their findings, eventually confirming that they had torn the code of the disease.
They found that the bacterial vibrio pectanicida is a clear cause of the marine star ruin.
“(This) is a question that researchers have tried to answer for almost 12 years, so we are thrilled.”
The paper, which described the four-year research project and its findings, was published online on Monday at Peer-Review Journal Ecology and Evolution.
Alyssa Wheatman, who helped launch the project in 2021, described the disease as “fierce”, causing sea stars to develop wounds, lose their arms and “disappear” for one or two weeks “for a week or two.
This has been particularly fatal for sunflower marine stars, killing around six billion species that can sprout 24 weapons and spread up to one meter.
The study stated that giant marine stars are now considered functional extinct in their former range away from the coast of continental United States, there is a loss of more than 87 percent in “Northern Refuge”, where they still remain, the study has said.
The collapse has led to the cascading effect, including ecological, cultural and economically important to the widespread losses of the forests.
“I think we didn’t really appreciate that as long as we lost them, how important they were,” Prantis said, describing orange, purple or brown sunflower stars described with an external influence on their ecosystem as “Keyston” species.
The giant sea stars are top predators, which affect fear in other wisdom.
“Everything that lives under water that lives under water, when they are coming, go away from a sea disease ecologist at Hakai Institute and an assistant professor at the University of Institute of Oceanings and Fisheries, BC,” when they are coming, they get away from them, “a marine disease at the Haqai Institute and a subsidiary at the University of BC.
They keep the population of marine urin in examination, in turn ensure the health of Kelp forests that provide housing and food for many other species.
The devastation of sunflower marine stars caused the “total ecosystem shift”, said, Prantis said, the biodivers turned the calep forests into “urin bare”.
The bacteria that caused the marine star ruined disease remained elusive for more than a decade as sea stars were first seen dying in large numbers in 2013. The same bacterium is known for attacking the Scallop larvae.
Prantis said that the success team preferred it for the blood of C Star, after the success team examined the diseased tissues and focusing on the coalomic fluid of sea stars.
Earlier research included driving tissues through small membrane filters, which excluded bacteria, which usually greater than the virus, explained.
He said that the team of Hakai Institute started by imitation of initial experiments, but they were not able to cause disease in healthy sea stars, they said.
“We were doing everything we could and we were never able to cause disease, and therefore we were suggested that the pathogen is larger than a virus.”
However, after pivoting for coalomic fluid, which Penthis described as “essential sea water”, researchers triggers the disease in healthy marine stars.
“It suggested that the pathogen was in that fluid, and so we just finish working with a very cleaner, easy tissue type,” he said.
From there, Pentisis made a list of all different microbial species found in wasting marine stars and compared it to healthy stars in the laboratory.
“I finally reached a place where I generated these different lists and it was very clear that the tones of different Vibrio species within our wasted marine stars and we were not really not seeing that in our healthy maritime stars,” he said.
Prantis stated that he filtered genetic data to see every tension of Vibrio bacteria, causing Vibrio Pectenicida to cause his ureka moment.
“We saw it in the sample of every ruined maritime star, and then we saw our controls and it was not in any of them,” he said.
Prantis said that other researchers wished him “good luck” when he joined the project, but suspected whether they would solve the mystery.
He said that it felt “incredible” to be part of a discovery that could help create a meaningful difference in the recovery of sea stars and their ecosystems, he said.
Wheatman also said that he was not sure that the project would be a result in a unique reply.
“I felt it would be complicated. I felt that there would be many things to trust other things,” he said. “It was much more clear than as I was expecting.”
This discovery allows researchers to turn on their efforts for deep questions, including the potential role of heating the sea temperature and the resistance to the disease and the ability to breed the sea stars in captivity to promote spur recovery, he said.
Now the disease seems seasonal, with the outbreaks that occur in the warm months, it can be a factor to suggest temperature, the wheat said, it will soon conduct temperature experiments to conduct further investigation.
“Does the vibrio pectinicida grow rapidly at hot temperatures and C Star can survive at growth rate at cooler temperatures, but when you reach hot temperatures, they can’t, what is happening?”
Conclusions can help researchers understand that sea stars can struggle with future climate change or survive, the wheel said.
Prantis stated that the “residues” of sunflower stars along the BC coast are population, and some of its “very possible” may be more resistant to wasted disease.
He can find that high -capacity marine stars to fight the disease and can be selectively breed, which can produce ‘superstars’ maritime stars for reconstruction in the wild.
“It sometimes looks like science fiction, but people are working on it,” he said.
This report of Canadian Press was first published on August 4, 2025.
Brainna Owen, Canadian Press