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Scientists identify Vibrio pectenicida as the bacterium causing sea star wasting disease.

SEATTLE — More than 5 billion sea stars have been wiped out along the West Coast by a mysterious disease. For more than a decade, scientists didn’t know why — until now.

Researchers at the Hakai Institute have identified the culprit as a bacterium called Vibrio pectenicida, known as “V-peck” for short. It’s now believed to be responsible for the widespread outbreak of sea star wasting disease, which causes sea stars to twist, lose limbs, and eventually collapse.

“There was a disease outbreak that hit sea stars and caused them to sort of start twisting — and their arms would actually walk away from their bodies,” said Alyssa Gehman, a marine disease ecologist at the Hakai Institute.

The bacteria can spread in at least two ways: through direct contact with an infected sea star or exposure to contaminated water. Once the infection sets in, it’s almost always fatal.

“In all the experiments we’ve run, once they start losing arms, they kind of lose all of their arms and we haven’t really seen anything survive after that,” Gehman said.

Gehman is part of the research team that made the discovery. She says identifying the cause is a critical breakthrough that now allows scientists to focus on treatment and containment.

“The question of where did it come from, how did it get into the sea stars, that’s a question we haven’t been able to ask, because we didn’t know what it was. And now that we do, we can actually ask that question,” she said.

At the University of Washington, scientists have already been working on recovery. Since 2019, they’ve been growing sunflower sea stars in lab settings. Last summer, they released the first lab-raised sea stars into the wild and are tracking their survival and growth.

This isn’t just about one species. The massive die-off has triggered a ripple effect. Sunflower sea stars are top predators of sea urchins. Without them, urchin populations exploded, devouring kelp forests that provide habitat and protection for marine life.

“When we had this great big loss of these predators, we saw huge increases in their prey and then their prey ate all the kelp,” Gehman said.

Scientists say solving this mystery opens the door to restoring balance to marine ecosystems. Now that they’ve identified the pathogen, the next step is finding sea stars that may be naturally resistant to it.

“Now that we know what the pathogen is, we can start to help them find, maybe we can find individuals that are resistant to this disease and they can start raising those ones so maybe we can try to raise more resistant sea stars to this pathogen,” Gehman said.