Fort Bragg diver spots critically endangered sunflower sea star, “the natural predator we need”

FORT BRAGG, CA, 12/9/22 — On Tuesday, after harvesting some red urchin, commercial urchin diver Grant Downie swam along the seafloor to check out conditions at a spot a couple miles south of Noyo Harbor. The seafloor quickly turned to purple urchin barren, a typical sight in Mendocino’s starkly changed underwater habitat. But then Downie saw a creature he hadn’t come across in more than six years: a sunflower sea star.

The sunflower sea star, or pycnopodia helianthoides, is an apex predator of sea urchins along the west coast of North America, from Mexico’s Baja California to Alaska. The 2013 sea star wasting disease that affected many star populations was catastrophic for pycnopodia: a recent Roadmap to Recovery report estimates that the sunflower sea star has since experienced global decline of around 94.3%.