An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:
''Alarming mass die-off of starfish in areas along Canada’s Pacific coast ......they’ve disintegrated, now there’s just goo left.....appeared to melt, some with single arms clinging to rock faces, tube feet still moving'' — Similar reports as far away as California.
There's been a mass die-off of starfish on British Columbia ocean floor with doubts whether the starfish other sea star species will recover.
“Since early September, they’re gone. It’s amazing,” said Donna Gibbs, a research diver. “Whatever hit them, it was like wildfire and wiped them out. They’re dying so fast.”
A graduate student collected starfish for a research project and watched as they “appeared to melt” in her tank.
Marine biologist Jonathan Martin said : “The starfish seem to waste away, just disintegrate. The arms just detach, and the central disc falls apart. It happens rapidly, I observed single arms clinging to the rock faces, tube feet still moving, with the skin split, gills flapping in the current in absolutely amazing numbers. The bottom from about 6 to 15 meters was absolutely littered with arms, oral discs, tube feet, gonads and gills.”
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