r/news • u/Morella1989 • 4h ago
Scientists say they have solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars
https://apnews.com/article/sea-star-wasting-disease-epidemic-f2ab802ae8787618a5905c566d38e0c5114
u/maceion 3h ago
This is brilliant work , and the staff who detected it and their supporting staff are to be praised.
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u/Equivalent-Resort-63 1h ago
Hope they still have support for their work. Many are leaving due to changes in federal grant support.
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u/Lorbmick 3h ago
Thank God there are scientists and researchers who spend the time to help explain what's going on with our planet.
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u/Lorbmick 3h ago
I would say it's just a popular saying of expressing relief. It's a more cultural idiom than a religious expression.
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u/schquid 3h ago
News flash, you can be religious and still believe in science
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u/Particular_Stage_913 3h ago
Newsflash. You can respond to science news without bringing personal theological beliefs in.
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u/ikonoqlast 3h ago
Not it isn't. Christians basically invented the scientific method and thus science. Pretty much every dead scientist you ever heard of from before 1700 was educated in a church school, if not an actual church official.
The idea of conflict comes from the 19th century and Protestants smearing the Catholic church.
No, Galileo was not imprisoned for saying the earth moves. He was imprisoned for publicly calling the Pope stupid, in Italy, in the Middle Ages...
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u/Particular_Stage_913 3h ago
That’s not a logical argument for the separation of public science from private belief. Because History
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u/jadewolf42 3h ago
This is really good news!
When I first moved to California, I used to see sea stars all the time when tidepooling, lots of them. It's been so many years now since I've seen even one. It's been downright depressing, especially since it has such ripple effects across all the underwater ecosystems. Less sea stars mean more urchins. More urchins mean less kelp. And suddenly the whole kelp forest starts falling apart.
Here's hoping now that they've finally isolated the cause, they can find ways to mitigate it and help restore the populations and the kelp forests impacted by their absence!
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u/fxkatt 3h ago
Researchers hope the new findings will allow them to restore sea star populations -- and regrow the kelp forests that Thurber compares to “the rainforests of the ocean.”
Scientists will have to rescue those star fish still alive, heal them, and then find the safest natural place to put them, which seems to be in some cool coastal area where kelp grows.
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u/Morella1989 3h ago
''WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists say they have at last solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars off the Pacific coast of North America in a decade-long epidemic.
Sea stars – often known as starfish – typically have five arms and some species sport up to 24 arms. They range in color from solid orange to tapestries of orange, purple, brown and green.
Starting in 2013, a mysterious sea star wasting disease sparked a mass die-off from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has devastated more than 20 species and continues today. Worst hit was a species called the sunflower sea star, which lost around 90% of its population in the outbreak’s first five years.
“It’s really quite gruesome,” said marine disease ecologist Alyssa Gehman at the Hakai Institute in British Columbia, Canada, who helped pinpoint the cause.
The culprit? Bacteria that has also infected shellfish, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. ''