Scientists say they have solved the mystery that killed more than 5 billion marine stars.

Scientists say they have finally resolved the mystery that more than 5 billion maritime stars have been killed in the North America Pacific coast in a decade long epidemic.

Sea Stars – often known as Starfish – usually have five arms and some species have 24 weapons. Their color is from solid orange to orange, purple, brown and green tapestries.

Starting in 2013, a mysterious seafronting disease gave birth to a large -scale dye from Mexico to Alasko. The epidemic has destroyed more than 20 species and continues today. The worst hit was a species called Sunflower Sea Star, which lost close to 90 % of its population in the first five years of the epidemic.

“It’s really horrible,” said Alisa Gheen, a Marine Disease Environment expert at the Hakai Institute, Canada, Canada.

He said that healthy marine stars have “sharp arms straight”. But because of the loss of illness, they increase the lesions and “then their arms actually fall.”

The culprit? According to a study published in the journal Monday, bacteria that also affect the shellfish Nature environment and evolution.

Rebecca Vega Tharber, a maritime micro -biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said, “The results” solve a long -standing question about a very serious illness in the sea. “

Researchers have taken more than a decade to identify the cause of the disease, in which many wrong leads and twists and twists are on the way.

Initial research indicated that this could be a virus, but it showed that scientists initially focused, actually a common resident within healthy marine stars and was not associated with the disease, co -author of the new study, Hockey Institute, Melania.

Other efforts lost the real killer as researchers studied tissue samples of dead stars, which no longer have a physical fluid that surrounds the organs.

But the latest study includes a detailed analysis of this fluid, known as the Coelomic Fluid, where the bacteria and the packetsida were found.

“This is incredibly difficult,” said Black Ishjima, a micro -biologist at the University of North Carolina, Vilmington, “said Black Ishjima. “The spy work through this team was” really smart and important, “he said.

Now that scientists are aware of this, they have a better shot to interfere with the help of maritime stars.

Scientists can probably test that the rest of the maritime stars are still healthy, Praites said. And consider whether they have to move, or later, in their imprisonment to transplant them to these areas, which has lost almost all the marine stars of their sunflower.

Scientists may also test that if some populations have a natural immunity, and if treatment such as probiotics can help increase the immunity from the disease.

Researchers say that such recovery is important not only for marine stars, but also for the entire Pacific’s entire ecosystem because healthy starfish promotes additional marine episodes.

Ghiaman said, “The stars of the sunflower” When you see them, they look innocent, but they eat almost everything that lives under the sea. ” “They are very eating.”

With very few maritime stars, marine urchins on which they usually explode in the population – and in a decade, the northern California increased by 95 % of the Calp forest about 95 %. These calip forests provide food and housing for a variety of animals, including fish, sea oats and seals.

Researchers hope that new searches will allow them to restore the population of the marine star – and regenerate the forests of the calip, which will be compared to “sea rains”.

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