The Brief

Over the past decade, more than 90% of sunflower sea stars have disappeared from the West Coast of North America. It’s gotten so bad that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has recommended that they be listed as threatened because the species appears to be on the path toward extinction.

One of the largest sea stars in the world, sunflower sea stars can grow to be 3 feet across. They once were ubiquitous off our coast, crawling through seagrass meadows and kelp forests, munching on purple sea urchins, helping to keep their populations in check. Since their disappearance, urchins have proliferated and kelp forests have suffered, leaving our coastlines more vulnerable to erosion.

Melissa Torres from Birch Aquarium and Riah Evin from California Academy of Sciences administer a spawn-inducing hormone to a female sunflower sea star.

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Birch Aquarium at Scripps

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Addressing the crisis

In response to the crisis, a team of scientists from aquariums across California have gotten together to try and figure out how to get the sea stars to reproduce in captivity. And after more than a year of experiments, they’ve finally been able to at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

“In the past, like, five years we've realized we need to be taking care of this and actually trying to restore those populations,” said Jenifer Burney, senior aquarist Aquarium of the Pacific and one of the co-leads of the SAFE (Saving Animals From Extinction) Sea Star Program, part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Sunflower sea star larvae.

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Aquarium of the Pacific

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Now, they have buckets full of fertilized eggs. Tons of tiny floating planktonic larvae, which (if everything goes well) will turn into sunflower sea stars over the next few weeks. They’ll then take two years to reach reproductive age.

A lot more research needs to be done until they’re released into the wild, but this is a step toward helping populations bounce back as it’s unclear if they’ll be able to do so on their own.

Scientists from Birch Aquarium and Aquarium of the Pacific administer a hormone that induces the male sea star to release sperm.

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Birch Aquarium at Scripps

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How things got so bad

In 2013, sea stars began dissolving en masse.

Sea star wasting syndrome was the culprit. A previously known disease, it seemed to mostly take out sick animals. But then it began to destroy healthy ones too.

It starts off as white lesions and progresses to the point where the sea star’s appendages break off, and their entire bodies eventually turn to goo.

It’s not exactly clear why the outbreak of wasting disease occurred, however, it could be linked to marine heat waves in the Eastern Pacific, which are anticipated to worsen as climate change continues to progress.

How scientists got sea stars to reproduce

Sea stars are finicky reproducers, so a big part of getting them to release their sperm and gametes into buckets of water is to make sure they’re healthy and comfortable. Because, much like us, stress is the enemy of a good time.

Before they go to spawn, they munch on mussels, clams, oysters, crabs and shrimp (which seems to be their favorite), according to Burney.

The team inducing a sea star to spawn.

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Birch Aquarium at Scripps

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The water needed to be between 40 and 58 degrees and constantly flowing over their bodies.

When ready, each sea star was injected with the hormone M1A, which gets them to release the goods.

After a previously failed attempt in November at Aquarium of the Pacific, scientists gave it another go with different sea stars at Birch on Valentine’s Day, using a successful spawn by scientists up in Washington as inspiration.

After 2½ hours, the male began releasing white masses of liquidy sperm.

And after 6 hours, the female began releasing millions of her orangey-pink eggs.

“At the time when I noticed she was starting, it basically just became all of us screaming and hugging each other,” Burney said.

The group then rushed to gather as many gametes and sperm as they could over the next several hours, dropping the product into five gallon buckets of water, later checking to see if they were properly fertilized.

What happens next

The fertilized eggs currently look like floating planktonic larvae. And if everything goes well, they’ll develop into sunflower sea stars in the coming weeks. It’ll take two years before they reach reproductive age, and even once they do, they won’t immediately be rushed out into the wild. Scientists also need to solidify the reproductive process and do further research on how to mitigate the wasting disease.

Team collects eggs from a female Sunflower Star at Birch Aquarium.

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Birch Aquarium at Scripps

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In the meantime, they’ll only be able to rely on sea stars in captivity to reproduce in order to avoid spreading disease, so any additional animals helps build the reserve of stars they can pull from.

How to see them and how to help

You can visit Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, or head down to Birch Aquarium at Scripps in San Diego.

Burney also asked that people use the app iNaturalist to document any sea stars you see in the wild. They have access to the app and can use spottings to document the location and size of the remaining populations.

Topline:

The case: In September, the city settled a lawsuit brought forward by two brothers in their 70s who said they suffered serious injuries after an LAPD officer crashed into their car. Days before the $18 million settlement was reached, lawyers for the brothers said Feldstein Soto called an expert witness testifying for the plaintiffs and “attempted to ingratiate herself with him and asked him to make a contribution to her political campaign,” according to a sworn declaration to the court by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Glassman.

The response: Feldstein Soto did not respond to an interview request. Her spokesperson said the settlement “had nothing to do” with the expert witness. Her campaign manager told LAist the city attorney had been making a routine fundraising call and did not know the person had a role in the case, nor that there were pending requests for her office to pay him fees.

What Jurado says: In a statement to LAist, Jurado said she wants to “make sure that the city’s legal leadership is guided by integrity and accountability, especially when their choices affect public trust, civic rights and the city’s limited resources."

What’s next: The motion needs to go through a few committees before reaching the full City Council. If it passes, the motion calls for the city attorney to “report to council in closed session within 45 days regarding the ethics breach violation and give updates to the City Council."

Every year in Santa Ana, Luis Cantabrana turns the front of his home into an elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe that draws hundreds of visitors.

Along the front of the house, the multi-colored altar is filled with lights, flowers and a stained-glass tapestry behind a sculpture of the Lady of Guadalupe. Cantabrana’s roof also is lit up with the green, white and red lights that spell out “Virgen de Guadalupe” and a cross.

Visitors are welcomed with music and the smell of roses as they celebrate the saint, but this year’s gathering comes after a dark year for immigrant communities.

Luis Cantabrana stands in front of the stunning altar he built in front of his home in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe. Every year, his display draws hundreds of visitors.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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Why do they celebrate? 

In 1513, the Virgin Mary appeared before St. Juan Diego between Dec. 9 and Dec. 12, asking him to build a church in her honor. Her image — a brown-skinned woman wearing a green veil with her hands together in prayer and an angel at her feet — miraculously appeared on his cloak.

To celebrate in Santa Ana, worshippers gathered late-night Wednesday and in the very early hours Dec. 12 to pray the rosary, sing hymns and celebrate the saint.

Cantabrana has hosted worshippers at his home for 27 years — 17 in Santa Ana.

The altar started out small, he said, and over the years, he added a fabric background, more lights and flowers (lots and lots of flowers).

“It started with me making a promise to la Virgen de Guadalupe that while I had life and a home to build an altar, that I would do it,” Cantabrana said. “Everything you see in photos and videos is pretty, but when you come and see it live, it's more than pretty. It's beautiful.”

The Santa Ana home's elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe draws hundreds of visitors each year.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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Gathering in a time of turmoil 

Many also look to the Lady of Guadalupe for protection, especially at a time when federal enforcement has rattled immigrant communities.

“People don’t want to go to work, they don’t want to take their kids to school, but the love we have for our Virgen de Guadalupe,” Cantabrana said. “We see that la Virgen de Guadalupe has a lot of power, and so we know immigration [enforcement] won’t come here.”

Margarita Lopez of Garden Grove has been visiting the altar for three years with her husband. She’s been celebrating the Virgencita since she was a young girl. Honoring the saint is as important now as ever, she said.

“We ask, and she performs miracles,” Lopez said.

Claudia Tapia, a lifelong Santa Ana resident, said the Virgin Mary represents strength.

“Right now, with everything going on, a lot of our families [have] turned and prayed to the Virgen for strength during these times,” Tapia said. “She's a very strong symbol of Mexican culture, of unity, of faith and of resilience.”

See it for yourself

The shrine will stay up into the new year on the corner of Broadway and Camile Street.

California’s unemployment agency kept paying cellphone bills for 4 1/2 years without checking whether its workers actually were using the devices.

That’s how it racked up $4.6 million in fees for mobile devices its workers were not using, according to a new state audit detailing wasteful spending at several government agencies.

The Employment Development Department’s excessive cellphone bills date to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it shifted call center employees to remote work and faced pressure to release benefits to millions of suddenly unemployed Californians.

It acquired 7,224 cellphones and wireless hotspots by December 2020. State auditors analyzed 54 months of invoices since then and found half the devices were unused for at least two years, 25% were unused for three years and 99 of them were never used at all.

The investigation, which auditors opened after receiving a tip, identified 6,285 devices that were unused for at least four consecutive months, and said the department spent $4.6 million on monthly service fees for them.

From the beginning, the department had about 2,000 more cellphones than call center employees, according to the audit. The gap widened over time after the pandemic ended and the department’s staffing returned to its normal headcount.

As of April, the audit said the department had 1,787 unemployment call center employees, but was paying monthly service fees for 5,097 mobile devices.

“Although obtaining the mobile devices during COVID-19 may have been a good idea to serve the public, continuing to pay the monthly service fees for so many unused devices, especially post-COVID-19, was wasteful,” the audit said.

Department officials told auditors they were unaware of the spending, but auditors pointed to regular invoices from Verizon that showed which phones were not being used.

“We would have expected EDD management to have reconsidered the need to pay the monthly service fees for so many devices that had no voice, message, or data usage,” the audit said.

The unemployment department began acting on the auditors’ findings in April, when it canceled service plans for 2,825 devices. It has since implemented a policy to terminate service plans for devices that go unused for 90 days.

The California state auditor highlighted the mobile devices in its regular report on “improper activities by state agencies and employees.” The audit also showed that the California Air Resources Board overpaid an employee who was on extended leave as he prepared to retire by $171,000.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.