Sea Star Wasting Disease Cracked

Over the past eight years I've posted regular reports on the welfare of local starfish as they endured (and some populations became extinct due to) a mysterious contagion that makes them rot alive. Now American television network CBS has announced that the cause of Sea Star Wasting Disease has been firmly established, and it's not a virus as suspected, but a bacteria.

As noted before, several species have developed a measure of immunity to this pathogen since it first appeared in 2013, but a few have been wiped out, at least in shallower, warmer water. One of my favourites, the sunflower star (Pynopodia helianthoides), once omnipresent on the North Coast, is now basically exterminated; according to the article, less than 10% of the original count still exist, all in cold, deep water. But efforts to breed them in captivity have been successful, so there's hope they might be reintroduced to their old habitat one day.

A little Googling verified that another old friend, the giant pink Pacific starfish (Pisaster brevispinus) also lives on in colder water.

As suspected, the underlying cause of this pandemic is climate disruption, which has allowed the bacteria to flow north along the eastern Pacific Coast, to warming waters where sea stars have no defence against it.

But we've got an important scientific advance in the identification of the pathogen. Together with significant rebounding on my local beaches and location of surviving populations of much-mourned MIAs, I'm taking delivery.


(Photo of pre-plague tidepool crammed with young Pycnopodia courtesy of the US National Park Service and Wikimedia.com)

WW: Sun shower

(Not real interested in coming back inside today.)

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WW: More oyster mushrooms

(Still Pleurotus ostreatus. I've posted on these before, but it never ceases to amaze me how attached this species is to the saltchuck. Rare just a few hundred yards inland, if you can smell the bay, this choice edible isn't just common, it's riotous. Something in the chemical signature of sea air.

The above photo documents just a few feet of downed big leaf trunk that's covered with them. And it's not the only host in this patch of woods, either; if I'd been of a mind, or just greedier, I could have had gallons.

But I only took about five stems, and am busy deciding what to do with them. [Among other things, oyster mushrooms are great breaded and fried, and make a worthy substitute for seafood or chicken in veganised dishes.]

A spring blessing that never gets old.)


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WW: Ochre star

(Pisaster ochraceus.)

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WW:Winter evening on the bay

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Autumn Valediction

to passing autumn
the pampas grass waves
goodbye, goodbye

Shirao

WW: Late summer sunset

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Taking Delivery

It's been a long time since I had a dramatic sit – the thing Zenners call kensho. This is mostly down to lifestyle constraints that have made practice scattered in recent years, as well as the fact that I've been doing this for 22 years. After the first few, your brain acclimates to the meditative state, becoming simultaneously more inured to and less precious about it.

Which is why the other night thrilled me as I've seldom been since those early days.

The set-up was predictable: I'd had an opportunity to sit regularly and deeply for several days, and also to sit outdoors, in a quiet, rural setting, which is always productive for me.

If the sea is also involved, so much the better, result no doubt of a lifetime as a bay boy, itself the product of my family's centuries-deep maritime tradition. And as it happens, I was sitting on a bluff over a particularly active passage – a narrow channel where the tide runs like a river, during a week of deep, still summer nights. But on the last one the temperature plummeted, a storm blew up, and I found myself sitting at midnight in a tearing wind, bundled to the chin. Still didn't help my hands, frozen in dhyana mudra.

I did this because I'm a macho Japanese-trained Zen hermit, determined to log half an hour of pointless suffering to prove my monastic manhood.

But that's not what happened.

Instead, my mind spent about twenty minutes (I imagine; could have been ten, might have been 50) confronting the gale, complaining about the cold, starting at alarming sounds soft and loud in the dark around me.

And then I slipped into The Zone.

My mind settled into an equanimous hum. My consciousness assumed high alert, a sort of excitement that's neither fear nor expectation, just… receiver-on. I thought nothing, but noted everything. The gusts iced my face, roared in my ears, yanked my clothes, tore branches off the huge firs around me, and I neither defied nor surrendered to any of it.

The storm, the night, the planet, and I, just, like, were.

It's been a long time since I saw that place.

Why I did that night, in that location, is an open question. Certainly, I was awash in 190-proof oxygen; the stuff was practically forcing itself into my lungs. And the very fact that the storm was an unremitting distraction probably made it a trigger; the symbiotic relationship between concentration and disruption being well-documented in Zen.

(This would be a good time to remind fellow seekers that your meditation practice is your own and so are the results. The cushion stories of others can infamously cue feelings of inadequacy and dissatisfaction, leading some to conclude they're no good at practice or not doing it right or using the wrong incense or whatever. If my account inspires you to go sit in a windstorm, and the result is nothing more than a head cold, it might simply mean that you have more common sense than I do.)

But one way or the other, I took delivery. Thanks for the encouraging experience. On to the next.


(A Storm Off The Normandy Coast, by Eugène Isabey, courtesy of The Eugene Victor Thaw Art Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Mummified crab

This hand-sized specimen of Puget Sound kelp crab (Pugettia producta) quite startled me on the high tide line, far from its habitat on the low tidelands, till I noticed that it was completely dead and dry. Probably thrown up there by the waves, then dried by the sun in this lifelike posture.

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WW: July mountain

(Mt. Rainier, icon of much of the Puget Sound Basin.)

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WW: Old City Hall

(Brilliant summer day in Bellingham, Washington.)

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WW: Native rhodendron

(Rhododendron macrophyllum, the Pacific rhododendron, is the state flower of Washington. In late spring it bursts out in the grey-green twilight of the North Coast jungle, where its pale pink blossoms seem to glow above the undergrowth. When my mom was in high school, kids in her small Puget Sound town used to cut truckloads of these from the forests along the bay, to fill the gym for prom.

Open in a new tab for greater impact.)

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WW: Oyster boat

(Dredging on the high tide.)

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Starfish Report 2023

Healthy adult P. ochreceus.

I conducted my informal annual survey of a local beach a few weeks ago and found the wasting-syndrome situation holding, relative to past years. The species recorded in the past are present in similar number, with a possible bump in the number of Pisaster ochraceus, the purple starfish. In that case I noted a heartening continued presence of adults with no noticeable infection or mutilation, supported by what I believe is a modest rise in the number of youngsters.

As this iconic North Coast star all but vanished at the height of the pandemic, I was touched to note this.

White E. troschelii.

With any good luck, this old friend is back to stay.

Evasterias troschelii, the mottled star, held the lead as the largest population on the tidelands since reclaiming first place from Dermasterias a few years back, though they still run small compared to pre-SSWS norms. Together with what may be signs of plague in two of the largest specimens, this may be a bit of a blue note. (See photographs; one individual appears unusually white about the disc, and a ray of another seems whiter and weaker than normal where it's been thrown over a cobble. Compare with the photos on this page. Again, I'm relying solely on 60 years of familiarity with the starfish of my homeland; this wasn't a scientific survey, and I may have misread the cues.)

So Evasterias may still be dying

Possible infected ray.

before it reaches full size. If so, the breeding population is keeping apace, so there are grounds to hope for an evolved solution.

For the rest, leather stars (Dermasterias imbricata) seem about as present as before, and sadly, Pycnopodia helianthoides, the sunflower star, and Pisaster brevispinus, the giant pink star, just as extinct. I wasn't able to observe the blood stars (Henricia leviuscula), which barely reach the intertidal zone, because the tide was a few feet higher than those I've caught in the past.

Final analysis: though the beach apparently still isn't clean, all in all, an encouraging show by the new normal.

Adolescent P. ochreceus.

WW: Sea anemone eating a crab

(The anenome [suspect Urticina columbiana] is about the size of a teacup; the crab is Hemigrapsus oregonensis, the green shore crab.

Beach crabs are seldom swallowed by anemones; on the contrary, when below the waterline, these crabs often rest in the middle of an open anemone's tentacles for long periods. I suspect this bravado is down to the fact that they're hard as porcelain and quite intractable when challenged, which is why they have very few predators. So I have no idea what the story is here. This one was still perfectly healthy despite being half-gobbed, yet not trying in the least to escape. Perhaps he burrowed into the cnidarian deliberately, though to what end I've no better idea.)

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WW: Draught horse team

(Belgians waiting to compete in the driving event at the Northwest Washington Fair. There are other breeds here as well, but for reasons I don't understand, Belgians seem to be the regional standard.)

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WW: Full moon over the bay

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WW: Cedar bark harvest

(Encountered this cedar while walking along the bay a few weeks ago. The distinctive scar is symptomatic of bark collecting by local indigenous persons in search of raw material for making baskets, clothing, and other practical items. And this time, if you look closely, you'll also see that someone has sketched a rough cartoon of an aboriginal man in charcoal on the debarked surface. Perhaps a portrait of the bark-harvester himself?

I've happened upon cedars like this in remote places since I was a kid. Always gives me a certain satisfaction to know that the First Nations are still out there, still being themselves, in the face of everything.)

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WW: Oyster mushroom catch

(Found these while biking, growing by the side of the road. Interesting thing about the way Pleurotus ostreatus behaves in these parts: it only seems to grow within about a quarter-mile of the shore. I've found them many times, but always where you can at least smell, and often see, the bay.)

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WW: Mt. Rainier

(Open in a new tab for a better view.)

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