Justin Cox
Velcro Star Eating a Spotted Ratfish in the ...

Check out this velcro star with a spotted ratfish locked in a full nelson! SeaDoc Society scientists Joe Gaydos and Cat Lo came across this scene during a research dive in Howe Sound in British Columbia.

Justin Cox
Training The Trainers at Camp Orkila

Thousands of fifth-graders will cycle through Camp Orkila on Orcas Island this summer to engage with our marine ecosystem. As we round the corner into Spring, the counselors who will guide those kids (5,800 total!) are deep in preparation and training. 

Last week, our team was honored to lead a low-tide beach walk at Camp Orkila to train this year’s Orkila staff. All of the counselors received a signed copy of our best-selling (and award-winning!) book for fifth graders, Explore the Salish Sea: A Nature Guide for Kids. 

Training The Trainers at Camp Orkila
Justin Cox
Rochelle Severson and Kevin Campion Cycle off ...

After a decade of service on the SeaDoc Society’s Board of Directors, Rochelle Severson and Kevin Campion will cycle off, with Board Member Ardi Kveven taking over as Board Chair.

Justin Cox
Farewell Southern Resident IPA & Thank You ...

As I write this, sitting in The Woods taproom where Southern Resident is brewed, Two Beers has donated more than $15,000 in support of the SeaDoc Society’s collaborative work to save Southern Residents. 

Not to mention the story they’ve helped tell on thousands of boxes and cans sold throughout the Pacific Northwest over the last five years. In that initial creative design phase, their team was insistent that the whales’ story and SeaDoc’s mission be clear and prominent on the packaging. 

Farewell Southern Resident IPA & Thank You Two Beers Brewing
Justin Cox
Why are Killer Whales Harassing and Killing ...

For decades, fish-eating killer whales in the Pacific Northwest have been observed harassing and even killing porpoises without consuming them—a perplexing behavior that has long intrigued scientists.

A study published today in Marine Mammal Science, co-led by Deborah Giles of Wild Orca and Sarah Teman of the SeaDoc Society, a program of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, looked at more than 60 years of recorded interactions between Southern Resident killer whales and porpoises in the Salish Sea to better understand why they exhibit this behavior.

Why are Killer Whales Harassing and Killing Porpoises Without Eating Them?

sea stars

Sunflower Sea Stars!

Our dive team has been out surveying for young of the year #rockfish this week with colleagues at Paua Marine Research. While did find the baby rockfish we set out for, we had another exciting finding!

We saw five different large sunflower sea stars. SeaDoc and colleagues have published several papers showing how these “world’s largest” sea stars have been decimated by sea star wasting disease and we’ve worked with numerous organizations to help get them listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN.

Ocean Outbreak: Confronting the Rising Tide of Marine Disease (Book Review)

Ask any ocean lover to name the biggest threats to ocean conservation and you’ll get a list so long it will make you uncomfortable: derelict fishing gear, increasing underwater noise, invasive species, ocean acidification, overharvest, plastics, toxins, warming water, and so on.

What you probably won’t hear is the word disease—not because the agents of disease are microscopic and out of sight, but because we know so little about how they affect the marine environment. Most people have never thought of parasites and pathogens as agents of change or important ocean stressors.

Falling Stars: Once-Abundant Sea Stars Imperiled by Disease Along West Coast

Falling Stars: Once-Abundant Sea Stars Imperiled by Disease Along West Coast

The combination of ocean warming and an infectious wasting disease has devastated populations of large sunflower sea stars once abundant along the West Coast of North America in just a few years, according to a study co-led by the University of California, Davis, and Cornell University published Jan. 30 in the journal Science Advances.

“In California, Washington and parts of British Columbia, sunflower sea stars keep urchins under control,” said Joseph Gaydos, senior author on the paper and director of UC Davis’ SeaDoc Society program. “Without sunflower stars, urchin populations expand and threaten kelp forests and biodiversity. This cascading effect has a really big impact.”

Sea Star Troubles Run Deep

By Bob Friel

One of the largest marine wildlife disease epidemics ever known to science —Sea Star Wasting Disease (SSWD)—has not spared the Salish Sea. While the most visible effect of the epidemic so far has been the loss of thousands of ochre stars, the Crayola-colored shallow-water species that turn our tide pools into works of purple and orange art, SeaDoc has discovered that great ecological damage is happening in deeper water too.

Drawing on data from more than 8,000 REEF (Reef Environmental Education Foundation) surveys by trained scuba diving citizen scientists along with precise transect studies completed by certified scientific divers, we found that SSWD has decimated populations of the once abundant sunflower sea stars to the point they’re considered virtually extirpated throughout our inland sea.

The Salish Sea hosts a great galaxy of sea stars encompassing a remarkably diverse collection of species. Among those, the sunflower (Pycnopodia helianthoides) holds a special place. Familiar to crabbers who often found them stuffed inside their pots eating their bait, and to divers who commonly swam over bottoms literally crawling with them, before the epidemic began in 2013, sunflowers were the most abundant sea star found below the low-tide mark.

Wasting spiny pink sea star
Wasting spiny pink sea star

The majority of our sea stars are predators, but the sunflower is a carnivore on a whole other level of dominance. Huge, relatively fast, and with three octopuses’ worth of hydraulic-powered arms, it’s the sucker-footed Starasaurus rex of the subtidal kingdom. While most marine life—as well as drysuited divers—steer well clear of sea urchins and their long, prickly spines, the sunflower stars gobble them like candy and then spit out the spiky bits. It’s the loss of such a voracious urchin-eater that’s particularly disturbing when we consider SSWD’s effects on our local ecosystem.

Herbivorous urchins graze on algae. A previous marine epidemic that killed off urchin populations in Florida and the Caribbean allowed algae to overgrow corals and severely damage tropical reefs. In our temperate waters, the concern is the reverse happening: with fewer sea star predators around, the urchin numbers can explode like underwater locusts and decimate the algae, mowing down our vital kelp forests, leaving behind what are known as urchin barrens.

With kelp such a crucial source of food and habitat for so many other creatures, the worry is that the loss of sunflower sea stars, which we’ve learned are particularly susceptible to SSWD, could start a trophic cascade that negatively alters the Salish Sea ecosystem.

SeaDoc and our partners remain on the case as this epidemic continues to affect our waters. We’re continuing the basic critter-counting science that alerts us to changes in the environment, investigating the virus linked to SSWD, and trying to determine whether other environmental factors played a part in the outbreak. If it turns out that intervention is necessary, we’ll be there to provide the science critical to inform the decision-making.