November 3, 2013 — Marine scientists are finding a large number of dead starfish along the West Coast stricken with a disease that causes the creatures to lose their arms and disintegrate.
The starfish are dying from "sea star wasting disease," an affliction that causes white lesions to develop, which can spread and turn the animals into "goo." The disease has killed up to 95 percent of a particular species of sea star in some tide pool populations.
"They essentially melt in front of you," Pete Raimondi, chairman of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of California, Santa Cruz's Long Marine Lab, told The Santa Rosa Press Democrat.
Even starfish in an aquarium at the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary visitor center in San Francisco died from wasting disease after water was pumped in from the ocean in September.
Read the full story at the Seattle Times