British Columbia

These sea stars were nearly wiped out — but B.C. researchers say fiords provided refuge

B.C. researchers have found that the fiords of the Central Coast may be providing refuge for the critically endangered sunflower sea star, a discovery that could have implications for wider ecosystems at risk due to warming seas.

Researchers say sea star wasting disease, whose exact cause is unknown, may be affected by water temperatures

A diver makes notes underwater with a notebook next to a large starfish.
Alyssa Gehman is seen diving in the Burke Channel along B.C.'s Central Coast and making notes on sea stars there. Around 90% of the sea star population along North America's West Coast was wiped out over the last decade, according to scientists, but they say cold-water fiords are providing a refuge. (Bennett Whitnell/Hakai Institute)

B.C. researchers have found that the fiords of the Central Coast may be providing refuge for the critically endangered sunflower sea star, a discovery that could have implications for wider ecosystems at risk due to warming seas.

Nine out of 10 sea stars have been wiped out since 2013 due to sea star wasting disease, which has led to a mass death of the animals along North America's West Coast, from Alaska to Mexico. The sunflower sea star is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

While the exact cause of the disease is unknown, scientists say it's had major ripple effects, as sunflower sea stars eat sea urchins and perform an important role in keeping those populations in check. Without them, urchins have flourished and been able to eat kelp forests, which further destabilizes marine ecosystems.

Now, after years of diving along B.C.'s Central Coast, researchers have found many healthy adult colonies of sunflower sea stars in the fiords there.

A number of starfish lie on an ocean floor.
The sunflower sea star is seen in the Burke Channel, one of the fiords along B.C.'s Central Coast. (Bennett Whitnell/Hakai Institute)

Alyssa Gehman, a scientist with the Hakai Institute and an adjunct professor at the University of B.C., co-authored a paper on the findings. What they found, she said, is that while sea star wasting disease has been found in fiords and sea stars have died there, the mortality rate is far lower than elsewhere in the ocean.

Researchers suspect the difference has something to do with water temperature. In fiords — long, narrow, and deep inlets often found between high cliffs along the central and north coasts — the ocean tends to be cooler than elsewhere.

Gehman said the research team was first alerted to the large number of sunflower sea stars in fiords by Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance divers who were looking for rockfish — and the two groups ended up collaborating on the final research paper.

"When we looked at the oceanography ... we found that where the sea stars are, it's colder," Gehman told Darius Mahdavi, CBC's science specialist. "That's our next thing, is trying to figure out exactly what that temperature relationship is, and how that's working."

A woman wearing sunglasses and a grey jacket smiles.
Alyssa Gehman, who led the study, says the research provides insight on how temperatures could affect sea star wasting disease. She acknowledged that climate change and marine heat waves could mean that cold-water refuges in fiords could change rapidly. (CBC)

Changes in seasons

Jeff Sha, an aquarium biologist at the Vancouver Aquarium who wasn't involved in the study, said scientists have evidence that sea star wasting disease thrives in warmer water.

"The higher the temperature, the more likely the onset of the disease, and the harder it is for an infected sea star to come back from that," he said.

"As temperatures are rising along our coastlines ... we've had a couple of heat domes in the last decade, each of those events basically was another round of devastation for the population."

A man with short black hair speaks next to an aquarium fish tank.
Jeff Sha with the Vancouver Aquarium says that, in his career as a diver, it's become rarer and rarer to see adult sea stars. (CBC)

Gehman said in the fiords, Arctic outflow conditions create cold winds in the winters, cooling the water and making the environment higher in oxygen, which is good for sea stars.

"In the summer, when it's hot, there's glacial runoff that comes through," she said. "And it's so fascinating, but it creates essentially a little freshwater river on the surface of the fiord."

Sha said sea stars don't like fresh water, which means they'll go deeper and into the colder water.

"The researchers are hypothesizing that that's kind of what's giving them a little bit of a refuge away from the warmer temperature zone, and keeping them healthy from the wasting disease," he said.

Two starfish are seen clinging on a rock.
The sunflower sea star is seen in the Burke Channel, one of the fiords in B.C.'s Central Coast. The species eats sea urchins, which have been blamed for eating kelp forests along the coast and causing ripple effects along the food chain. (Grant Callegari/Hakai Institute)

Implications for recovery efforts

Sha said sunflower sea stars, in particular, are a ferocious predator for sea urchins — and without them, there's been devastating effects for other species.

"Sea urchin populations have boomed on our coast, causing a decline in our algae and our kelp forest, which then removes habitats for rockfish and all these beautiful animals that we have," the biologist said.

WATCH | Some sea stars released into the wild: 

Sunflower sea stars released into the wild after disease stunted population

7 months ago
Duration 4:13
Over the past decade, disease has killed off around five billion sunflower sea stars, disrupting underwater ecosystems from Alaska to California. Now, the starfish are being released back into the wild around the San Juan Islands in Washington State. They're the first of their kind to have been bred in captivity by researchers at the University of Washington. Jason Hosin, a University of Washington marine biologist, shares more about his research.

Gehman said some kelp forests along B.C.'s coast have been reduced to "urchin barrens," where all of the leafy portions of the kelp have been consumed by sea urchins.

The scientist said that, as researchers look to raise sunflower sea stars in the laboratory and put them back in the ocean, their work in the fiords could be important — though she acknowledged that climate change will continue to affect whether fiords can remain a "refuge habitat" for the species.

"There's hope that we could potentially raise stars that would be resistant to the disease," she said. "And this suggests that we need to pay attention to temperature when we're doing that work as well."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Akshay Kulkarni

Journalist

Akshay Kulkarni is an award-winning journalist who has worked at CBC British Columbia since 2021. Based in Vancouver, he is most interested in data-driven stories. You can email him at akshay.kulkarni@cbc.ca.

With files from Darius Mahdavi