Starfish wasting disease baffles US scientists

[n2doc]

Scientists are struggling to find the trigger for a disease that appears to be ravaging starfish in record numbers along the US west coast, causing the sea creatures to lose their limbs and turn to slime in a matter of days.

Marine biologists and ecologists will launch an extensive survey this week along the coasts of California, Washington state and Oregon to determine the reach and source of the deadly syndrome, known as "star wasting disease".

"It's pretty spooky because we don't have any obvious culprit for the root cause even though we know it's likely caused by a pathogen," said Pete Raimondi, the chairman of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California.

Signs of the syndrome typically begin with white lesions on the arms of the starfish that spread inward, causing the entire animal to disintegrate in less than a week, according to a report by the Pacific Rocky Intertidal Monitoring Program at the University of California.

more

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/05/starfish-wasting-disease-scientists-west-coast

[gopiscrap]

1. yup, and we continue to corporations fuck over the planet!

[Faux pas]

2. Radiation maybe?

Seems logical to me.

[longship]

3. Uh nope.

Illogical. That would be a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Anyway, there is almost zero radiation from Fukushima on the West coast.

And then you have to explain how the radiation can result in the seastar disease, which is most certainly from environmental conditions. It's happened before and there was no Fukushima meltdown.

So it's time to put that particular meme away.

From the article:

Starfish have suffered from the syndrome on and off for decades but have usually been reported in small numbers, isolated to southern California and linked to a rise in seawater temperatures, which is not the case this time, Raimondi said.

[Daemonaquila]

4. Nope.

No evidence for that theory, lots for the theory that it's a bacteria or virus.

1) This has happened years ago, long before Fukushima, just not as extensively. It has now happened on both coasts. This wave is terrifying due to its size, not its novelty.

2) Radiation and radiation damage is detectable. These animals don't show any evidence of it.

3) They DO show evidence of a pathogen. One experiment involved getting a tank of healthy starfish, and introducing one sick one in the early stages of the malady. In a week, all were dead.

So, the real question is whether it's a bacteria, virus, or parasite (unlikely), is it a new one, and what species are susceptible. If it's just starfish, we certainly have a problem. If it goes further, we have a huge problem. While treatment is also a question, it would be difficult to impossible to treat millions of animals up and down the coastline, so the final real question is how to quarantine it or get it to burn out without destroying too much of that ecosystem.