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A visit to Cannon Beach in the summer of 2014 finds distressing news: starfish are dying off due to a mysterious 'wasting disease.'  At this time no one is certain where it came from or what it is, exactly.  Affected starfish begin to lose their grip on the rocks, and their limbs turn gelatinous and even fall off.  Eventually, the creature dies.  When we were here in June, we didn't see one healthy starfish, and only a few sick ones, even.  The rest were already gone.  On the other hand, the low tide exposes tide pools teeming with sea anenomes, in some places carpeting the sandy bottoms of the tide pools.  Giant specimens hang from the rocks into the water below.

Starfish Wasting Disease

Starfish showing signs of the disease..

Part of one of the legs has fallen off.

A dead starfish invites the attention of this seagull.

The gull swallowed the starfish whole!

Sea Anenomes Fill the Ecosystem Niches

Small anenomes carpet the bottom of a tidepool.

A healthy colony of anamomes.

Large ananomes hang from the rock into the tidepool.

Mussels, welks, snails and barnacles cover the rocks as usual.

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© 2004 Paul Griffith All rights reserved.