Seeing stars? It’s not just you. Here’s a primer on the celestial appearances in our local tide pools.
The recent, extreme negative tides of the last month have left us entranced with the rich marine life teeming in the La Jolla tide pools.
It seems to many that among the biodiverse species, there’s a resurgence of sea star species, with many more of these ocean asteroids than remembered, leaving tide pool explorers star-struck.
Sea stars are invertebrates; some are smooth and others are granular or spiny. Most are predators, feeding on other creatures through a mouth at the center of their undersides.
In 2013 and 2014, scientists identified a “wasting” virus among sea stars that had wiped out millions of the echinoderms in California, and one in particular: the sunflower sea star, considered functionally extinct on the West Coast.
Concentrated efforts to revive the sea star populations emerged, as without sea stars to feed on urchins and more, the urchins in turn decimate kelp forests and marine ecosystems suffer greatly.
One of the more prominent projects to restore sea stars, out of UC Santa Cruz, notes that in ten years, the wasting disease is still going, though in lower numbers, with sightings (collected by citizen scientists and researchers) of sunflower stars gaining in abundance.
Locally, a team at Birch Aquarium at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography successfully spawned three sunflower stars in 2023, giving hope for the health of the species, kelp forests and the ocean.
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The recent upswing in the constellations of sea stars found in La Jolla tide pools doesn’t necessarily mean total recovery, according to Charlotte Seid, the Benthic Invertebrate Collection manager at SIO.
“I’m not aware of a statistically significant study showing that,” she said.
But anecdotally, Seid, a self-proclaimed tide pooler, scuba diver and “nature nerd,” has been “encouraged by personally seeing sea stars in the La Jolla tide pools,” she said, noting that sea stars are visible en masse just under the tideline in the sandy shallows.
What the numerous sightings mean in a scientific sense “remains to be determined,” Seid said, encouraging tide pool visitors to report their sightings to the UC Santa Cruz study (seastarwasting.org) or the citizen science app iNaturalist.
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“What would be really meaningful would be to see the vulnerable species making a comeback in a statistically significant way,” Seid said. “I hope we’ll see that in our lifetime.”
If you chance upon one of these stellar sea creatures, in addition to reporting it, Seid emphasizes the need for caution.
Removing a sea star is illegal in the local Marine Protected Areas, and though gently touching them may be allowed, Seid warns against disturbing a sea star that is actively engaged in feeding – indicated by its placement on top of a mussel or other creature.
And if you spy a small dot on the star’s surface, worry not, Seid said, adding some mistake the dot for a parasite or sign of illness.
It’s a pore, called a madreporite, and is a normal part of the star’s anatomy that helps it breathe and take in water, she said.
Whether the sea stars’ recent increase in appearance is due to a real resurgence in animal abundance or simply the serendipity of tidal timing and visits – and Seid said “it could very well be an element of both” – the trend is a good thing.
“Keep them coming,” she said.
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