Wish Upon a Sea Star for the New Year

Wishing on a sea star is a good place to start the New Year for me. For one thing, I don’t have to stay up till midnight to do it or hope for a cloudless night sky. Sea stars are the invertebrates we like to call star fish even though they really aren't fish at all. Though sea stars are harmless to humans in the oceans they rank among the top predators eating mussels, barnacles, and sea snails and preyed upon themselves by very few. Starfish may seem fairly unimportant, but they're actually a keystone species in many marine environments. Most live near the shore where I like to spend my time looking for them among the tide pools around Marine Beach, but some inhabit the bottom of deep seas. Within their own ecological communities these predators fill a vital niche and if the sea stars die off the food chains and webs that they are a part of may face disastrous changes, fundamental changes, for sure. The problem is the sea stars are dying off in some areas of the Pacific Ocean and what is killing them is highly lethal to them, causing some local populations to go extinct literally overnight. As yet the cause of the sea star kills is unknown but possibly bacterial and the death they face is death by dissolving. Since sea stars don't feel pain, death by dissolving doesn't hurt them. There is that, still I hope to be able to wish upon a sea star for many New Years in the future.