Staff at Canada’s Vancouver Aquarium are alarmed after Seastars went from “overpopulated” to “wiped out” in a   matter of weeks.  And they don’t know if the sea creatures will recover from whatever happened.

“Whatever hit them, it was like wildfire and just wiped them out,” said Donna Gibbs of the Aquarium’s Howe Sound Research and Conservation Group.

Last month, a diver alerted Aquarium staff that he had found a number of dead and decaying Sunflower Seastars in a popular dive spot just off the shore of West Vancouver.  Within weeks, the tentacled orange Seastars had all but disappeared in Howe Sound and Vancouver Harbor, disintegrating where they sat on the ocean floor.

A marine biologist and diving enthusiast noted that the Stars were losing their arms; some of the arms were seen clinging to rocks.  As fast as the animals died, they began to decompose.  Researchers hoping to get samples of the dead Stars back to the lab were left with containers of goo.

Similar die offs have occurred near California, Florida, and the Northeastern US coast.  With no answers in sight, researchers can only hope there are enough Seastars left to repopulate on their own.