no, they had no idea as of  yet. There are microbiologists and others
working on it. They did note that in the past things like this have
taken place in conjunction with El Nino years, but there has been no
El Nino this time.

On 11/14/13, Stemke Douglas <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Any indication of the cause?
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 11:36 AM CST Steve Rosenthal wrote:
>
>>there was a story on the network news last night about an emergent die-off
>>of large sea stars (ochre and sunflower stars) going on along the west
>>coast, so far no explanation. It was noted that the phenomenon was
>>widespread, but not at all continuous, ie large unaffected areas between
>>affected areas (in fact two areas in Central Oregon i visited last week
>> had
>>perfectly healthy looking ochre stars).
>>
>>One marine ecologist noted that of course there would be impacts to the
>>rocky intertidal community, particularly the california mussels, released
>>from predatory pressure. would become more dominant and potentially crowd
>>out other species competing for space. And they showed a picture of
>> mussels
>>in their matural habitat up close.
>>
>>there are several related articles on the internet.
>>
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