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posted by martyb on Saturday November 22 2014, @12:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the neutronfish-are-starfish-that-went-supernova dept.

The Seattle Times reports on a string of grisly sea-star die-offs.

Sea-stars on the West Coast are dying at an unprecedented and alarming rate. This most recent outbreak was discovered in Washington in 2013 and continues to confound Ecologists.

New research, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has linked the wasting disease to a virus that has been found in sea-stars since the 1940s. Which raises the question of what would cause this recent, explosive outbreak?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @01:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @01:09PM (#118755)

    What can't global warming do?

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @02:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @02:03PM (#118765)

    This wasting disease virus that the summary mentions sounds an awful lot like systemd. What's happening to these starfish is the same as what's happening to Debian, as far as I can tell. In the beginning, they're strong and robust. Then they gradually become infected with this disease. It isn't very obvious at first, but it soon overwhelms the victim. The victim's body soon starts to degrade, with one bodily system after another starting to fail. Eventually the victim is brought to the brink of death; there is no salvation possible. The victim, be it a starfish or Debian, succumbs to the atrocious nature of this disease. Systemd has struck yet again.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @04:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @04:30PM (#118799)

      Also, Fox News thinks there are still plenty of unanswered questions about Benghazi.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by dx3bydt3 on Saturday November 22 2014, @02:46PM

    by dx3bydt3 (82) on Saturday November 22 2014, @02:46PM (#118773)

    It seems unlikely that climate change is to blame for this particular die off. Given that the virus causing the deaths of the sea-stars has been identified, the question becomes why is this outbreak more severe than previous ones. The temperatures and pH vary locally more than the overall temperature rise and acidification caused by climate change. This outbreak is widespread, and there haven't been localized outbreaks of similar severity in areas with naturally warmer or more acidic water. So there must be some other explanation. This reasoning doesn't necessarily absolve climate change, as there could be another dependent variable like salinity or some change in what the sea-stars are eating. It could just be the virus itself; take H1N1, SARS and ebola these epidemics were more to do with the viruses themselves than changes in the environment.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @03:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @03:50PM (#118788)

    That is all.

  • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by maxim on Saturday November 22 2014, @04:12PM

    by maxim (2543) <maximlevitsky@gmail.com> on Saturday November 22 2014, @04:12PM (#118794)

    Who uses OpenBSD these days

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @04:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @04:35PM (#118800)

      The smartest people around. The ones who care about security. The ones who care about running only the highest quality software.