For years, a wasting disease has been turning sea stars to goo off the California coast. Scientists now finally know the cause, and are beginning to fight back.

Whether it has over 20 arms like the sunflower sea star, or just 5, billions of Pacific sea stars were being wiped out by an unknown assailant.

After four years of experiments from a huge collaborative effort led by the California Institute of Marine Sciences, biologists finally identified the culprit: a kind of bacteria called Vibrio.

Devastating to coral, shellfish, and human beings, this strain of Vibrio has been labeled FHCF-3. The scientists determined it was the cause of the epidemic by examining what might be called the sea star’s blood. It doesn’t have blood as we would recognize it, but a circulatory fluid called co

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