SAN DIEGO — A new milestone is marking a huge advancement toward saving the critically endangered sunflower sea star.

What You Need To Know

  • The sunflower sea star is critically endangered

  • They have been hit hard by a sea star wasting disease that swept across the West Coast

  • It's estimated that more than five billion Sunflower Stars have died from the disease

  • The death of sunflower sea stars allowed sea urchins to destroy much of California’s kelp forests

Love is on the brain for Melissa Torres. She is part of the team working to save the beautiful, but critically endangered, sunflower sea star.

“Gorgeous, purple, brown, pink, the sea stars are so gorgeous,” Torres said.

Experts gathered at Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, where they successfully spawned and cross-fertilized gametes from a male and a female, resulting in fertile eggs.

Experts at Birch Aquarium were joined by partners from the Aquarium of the Pacific, California Academy of Sciences, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, or SDZWA, and Sunflower Star Laboratory.

Torres said they always have a sea star spawning response kit nearby so they can jump into action at a moment’s notice.

“So if you show up and you find that these sea stars are spawning, you can open this kit right up,” she said.

The team used three different sperm samples from the same male to fertilize the eggs. One sample was fresh sperm, one sample was frozen sperm stored in a minus 80° Celsius freezer, and one sample was cryo-preserved sperm stored in the SDZWA's Frozen Zoo.

Each sample yielded fertilized eggs, marking a monumental advancement in the collective endeavor to bolster the population and genetic diversity of sunflower stars in accredited zoos and aquariums.

Related Stories

Jennifer Burney co-leads the Association of Zoos and Aquariums SAFE Sunflower Sea Star Program, which is also co-led by the Aquarium of the Pacific and Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium. She said a sea star wasting disease wiped out 99% of the sunflower sea star population, which allowed sea urchins to destroy much of California’s kelp forests. The SDZWS estimates more than five billion sunflower sea stars have died from this disease.  

“People don’t realize how catastrophic the loss of the sea stars was along our coast," Burney said. "That is a huge loss for any species, but especially one that plays such a vital role in the kelp forest ecosystem. It was pretty devastating.”

Some fertilized eggs remained at Birch Aquarium, while the rest were transported to the Aquarium of the Pacific, California Academy of Sciences and additional partners throughout California. Each partner will leverage their expertise toward the goal of culturing these fertilized eggs to larvae and then adulthood. Burney said this success wouldn’t have been possible without a passionate group working together.

“Our SAFE program right now has 35 partners and we’re spread out among a diverse amount of institutions. Some of them are aquariums, some of them are zoos. We’ve got research labs, universities, you name it,” she said. “We’ve gotten really good at raising them in captivity and we’re able to do that here.”

This success and collaboration also contributes to a comprehensive multi-faceted, multi-partner "Roadmap to Recovery" to help accelerate the recovery of this species along the West Coast.