Strange disease kills millions of American starfish

Recently a large number of American starfish are found dead caused by strange diseases. There is no exaggerated that it may be called catastrophic. "It's staggering, really, the millions of stars that have died. It is not apocalyptic or extreme to say that," says Drew Harvell, a biologist at Cornell University, describing what is widely regarded as one of the worst marine disease events ever recorded. The starfish is also called sea stars. Millions of the starfish died in recent years. They had their legs curl up and pull away from their bodies, breaking the animals to pieces before they turn to mush, often in a matter of days. Scientists are struggling to find out the reason. Once densely packed onto the rocks and on the ocean floor, the key predators are simply missing from some locations, their numbers cut by 95 percent or more. As early as in 2013, this phenomenon called Sea Star Wasting Syndrome was noticed by rangers in Olympic National Park in Washington state. It has now been documented from California to Alaska, and led to die-off that is bigger and more widely spread than any seen before. There was a group of researchers published their findings indicating strong evidence that a virus was causing the disease last year. Now researchers are studying why the so much more widespread and deadly. They are considering how warmer water brought by climate change is affecting the virus, starfish and the ecosystem. "We've had anomalously warm oceans for the last two years. Really, what we would call hot water. It is really the dominant thing to consider," Harvell said. The problem is urgent to be solved even through it's hard to collect data on a big scale. The sea star is kind of the mascot of the intertidal. We should protect these sea stars, the ocean, the ecosystem, thus protecting ourselves. Read more:http://about.cusabio.com/m-185.html