SoCal Scientists Breed Starfish Babies For The First Time. What It Took And Why It Matters

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.