The "starfish walking back to the sea" FAQ & why it is sad

So, apparently back in 2012, the original producer of this video shot this lone sea star out on a South Carolina beach as it was struggling to get back to the ocean, likely due to a mass stranding or some other event which stranded it on the tropical Atlantic beach..

Here's the original, very static heavy video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV5H1qNwFKo

and here is the "cleaned up" version which was released in October 2017...

This video went viral and was circulated widely in a huge number of widely read newspapers all over the world including The Sun, the UK's Daily Mail and oddly enough, the Indian Express! 

These and other venues reported it with such inaccurate hyperbole as "Incredible moment starfish WALKS down the beach after getting stranded on the sand!!" with the word "INCREDIBLE" being dropped as if this was somehow aliens landing on the Earth for the first time!


But sadly, what was happening here wasn't really THAT momentous and in fact was pretty sad.

There was no information on what was happening, what species this was or the context of this whole thing...  So here's my attempt to shed some light on this..

1. What species is this? And how does it live normally? 

This is a starfish called Luidia clathrata and these are members of a group of "sand stars" called the Luidiidae. A family with only one genus, Luidia named for a 18th century Welsh naturalist  named Edward Lhuyd whose Latin handle (they all had one!) was Luidius. One of his colleagues named this genus of sea stars after him in 1840 a story was born!

You can read lots about Luidia in a blog I wrote here in 2014!

Long story short..they eat snails, clams and other small critters in the sand. They can bury themselves in the top part of the sediment where they live.

This species in the waters of the tropical Atlantic on the US coast.. Florida, South Carolina, etc. are commonly encountered and commonly seen on beaches..

2. Seen on BEACHES? Why is THAT??
 How did this individual end up on the beach? Likely due to a mass stranding following a storm, which I've written about here... But here's a video of such an occurrence featuring many, MANY of this species stranded along the shoreline

3. What makes them so vulnerable? 
Basically these sea stars don't have a lot of "hold" on the surface because their tube feet are pointed rather than suckered. Their little tube feet are modified to help them efficiently dig into the sand or other sediment both to help them feed and to hide them from potential predators..

BUT when big waves or currents come along.. they can be swept away and taken to hostile environs such as this seashore..

Bear in mind that this species is quite abundant and while its unclear what these "natural disasters" mean for the population of these animals, I wouldn't be surprised if the recovery was relatively quick given how many of them there are..

4. What do they look like alive and "normal"???
Here is a healthy individual of this species moving naturally underwater, albeit near the beachfrot

Starfish from paul zoeller on Vimeo.

As the video would indicate..these are actually elegant and very beautiful animals in their natural habitat. In fact, Luidia is one of the FASTEST known sea star species..

5. Why is it sad?
    So, its literally been months since the original "crawling" video posted but I STILL have this being sent to me with comments about "HOW WONDERFUL IS NATURE OCEAN" or "AMAZING OCEAN CREATURE" etc. etc... when in truth this video exploits this animal desperately trying to get back to the ocean

    There's an important consideration here: Sea stars operate using a unique series of tubes in their body called the water vascular system which operates primarily using hydraulic pressure throughout the arms and so forth. This is how they move and operate all of their tube feet and so on...

via http://www.deepseanews.com/2012/03/veins-of-water-the-evolution-of-the-echinoderm-water-vascular-system/

  The water vascular system NEEDS SEAWATER TO OPERATE.

Many echinoderms DO have a limited ability to tolerate BRIEF periods out of water..but this is essentially the animal with residual water remaining in its Water Vascular System, such as the tube feet and so on..

Fluid is still required for movement AND survival. Water carries oxygen and other necessities, such as food and etc. throughout the body. 

So, that long crawl back? is not both a crawl to return to comfort but also a return for SURVIVAL.

Folks who express the "WONDER" over that pic are perhaps extending a... misplaced emotion.. 

Fortunately the original producers of the video have said repeatedly that they had returned that specimen to the ocean shortly after they shot it. So, good on them. I thank you on behalf of the starfishes!!

So, in the meantime..can we PLEASE let the video go  and LOSE  all of the sad, misplaced hyperbole about how amazing this is?? Its just painful to watch. 

thanks. 

What's up with dead starfish washed up on beaches?

Asterias forbesi from South Carolina via http://wbtw.com/2015/02/10/1000s-of-starfish-wash-ashore-on-sc-island/

So, for whatever reason, I've been noticing an uptick in the number of reports (and questions from the public) about moribund or otherwise dead starfishes (aka sea stars) being washed up on beaches en masse. 

For example, this account of Pentaceraster sp. from Queensland Australia (here). 

to this account of Asterias rubens  from Pensam Beach, New North Wales in the UK,

And I've seen a host of different reports. Many from the southeast coast of the United States, in the United Kingdom and even from Cape Town, South Africa. 

I thought I would take a moment to provide what seems to be the MOST likely explanation: During storms, violent or strong water currents pick starfish up off soft sediment bottoms and wash them ashore.

Different species of starfish in different parts of the world are affected but all share certain commonalities.

So here's the thing. As a scientist I've NOT actually seen storm-driven currents pick up hundreds to thousands of starfish and drop them on the beach. My conclusion is based on an assessment of various environmental factors which all point to, what seems to me, a parsimonious conclusion.

You'll often see a lot of officials and local biologists essentially say the same thing. There are LOTS of these starfish present AFTER a storm. 

None of them actually saw what happened (and how could they have?) but this seems like an explanation which fits all the facts. 

Lines of reasoning and evidence pointing to the "storms beach starfish" hypothesis

• In almost EVERY instance that this has been reported, there have been reports of either storms or high winds. Even if this was not necessarily reported in the news report itself. For example in the case of the Queensland Pentaceraster case, there was a reported storm involving hail the day before!(here) 
• Bear in mind that storms don't JUST mean high winds and rough water current. It also means FRESH WATER input. Echinoderms are notoriously intolerant of low salinity/freshwater. Low salinity water might serve to weaken or otherwise just disable enough of them to be washed ashore. 
• The species in question: Luidia clathrata, Pentaceraster sp., Asterias forbesi, Asterias rubens etc. (and others) are all known to occur on sandy or unconsolidated (i.e. loose sand) sediment bottoms. So its not unreasonable to see how strong water currents associated with inclement weather could serve to pick them up and drop them ashore. These species all tend to occur with rather high abundance so they tend to end up washed ashore in great numbers.

Some Common questions:

1. There are SO many dead! Will the starfish population recover?

     Yes. Almost certainly. Although it seems like hundreds to thousands of individuals bear in mind that many of these species occur over a huge area (Luidia clathrata for example occurs throughout the Gulf of Mexico and along the southeastern coast of the United States) and their spawn includes hundreds of millions of individuals.

     A related question to this usually involves "If they survive, shouldn't they be put back?" Unfortunately, its unlikely that most of them have survived by the time they've been found. Would it be good to have them returned to the ocean? Sure. And in fact, the good folks in Fish Hoek Beach in Cape Town, South Africa did just that!! 

The living starfish  (species: Marthasterias glacialis) were collected and returned to the ocean. From an ecological/population ecology perspective this was probably a trivial event but it says a lot about the people involved. So good on them! 

2. Based on the news articles, scientists are always BAFFLED! BAFFLED I tells ya'! About this "starfish washing up thing" Why is that??

So, uh... scientists are not REALLY baffled by these events. Almost every article about starfish washing up on a beach usually involves a scientist providing an explanation for what happened. Usually involving a storm or freshwater input. But as I said before none of them (myself included) actually SAW what happened. And so their explanation is usually filled with qualifiers and caveats that the news media exploits as "SCIENTISTS BAFFLED BY THIS THING THAT HAPPENED!" 

and of course, there is a.. how shall we say... "sensationalist" element which is used to make the story a bit more appealing to the general populace. 

But really? It was probably storms stranding them on the beach. 

3. OH NOES! We recently read about whales/dolphins/jellyfishes being stranded on the beach!! Does this mean the starfish are all dying and beaching themselves on the beach for the same reason??? 

*sigh* No. No it does not.

Animals such as whales, dolphins and jellies (jellyfish) all swim in the water column. In the case of animals like jellyfish and/or by the wind-sailors, water currents end up carrying a bunch of them onshore. Its not always clear what beaches whales and dolphins (or if there is a single reason in every case) but in these cases, we have animals that are in constant motion that get stranded based in part on the animals getting there on their own power.  

Starfish live on the ocean bottom. They get picked up and carried to the beach. Its a localized event tied to something specific..like a storm. It would have to be VERY unusual to see some kind of event that would be the sole cause of mortality affecting constantly swimming (i.e., pelagic) animals like dolphins and bottom living invertebrates like sea stars.

4. OH NOES! ITS TEH STARFISH WASTING DISEASE!! 

Nope. When starfish succumb to starfish wasting disease (aka starfish wasting syndrome, etc.) they show white lesions and in most cases they disintegrate in place, whether its underwater or in the intertidal or wherever. Image from the UCSC Starfish Wasting Disease Page.

Currently, Starfish Wasting seems to be primarily centered on the west coast of North America.

Most of the animals one observes washed up on the beach generally seem to have been in good health.  

Is it possible that infected starfish could begin to appear? Sure. But individuals would need to show lesions or other indications of disease which we have yet to observe. 

5. OH NOES! ITS TEH End of Days/R'Lyeh is rising and Cthulhu is chasing the starfish out of the sea!!

                           

Cthulhu Rising by PeterSiedlArt on DeviantArt

If Cthulhu's return caused a massive storm surge, with high velocity wind and water currents and huge storms causing freshwater input to local ecosystems thus resulting in a big low-salinity wave that washed a bunch of starfish onto shore? then... maybe. But otherwise. no. 

But seriously.. do I continue to be interested in beachings? Sure. Many interesting potential questions. Are we seeing more of these beachings because of climate change-related storms? How seriously do these storms affect the populations of these species? and more importantly their prey? How regularly do they occur?   But let's keep them to normal, localized phenomena and not crazy, "end of the world" death storm events shall we??