sea stars juveniles

Divers with the Oregon Coast Aquarium spotted these juvenile sea stars at Florence's North Jetty in October 2014.

(Oregon Coast Aquarium)

Sometimes seeing stars is a good thing.

Divers with the Oregon Coast Aquarium earlier this month found and surveyed a throng of juvenile sea stars at Florence's North Jetty.

Thousands of white stars covered underwater rocks, as if they were a colony of barnacles.

"I have never seen them in numbers like that. It was pretty incredible," aquarium Dive Safety Officer Jenna Walker said in a press release.

Why the sight is cause for hope is because sea star numbers on the Oregon coast are being decimated by sea star wasting syndrome, which causes lesions and the eventual disintegration of sea stars into piles of gelatinous goo. The syndrome's cause is not yet known.

The abundance (up to 202 individuals per square meter) of the thumbnail-sized junior sea stars could be the first sign of a sea star recovery in Oregon, according to aquarium staff.

One thing missing from the site where the young stars were found, however, was adult sea stars. The absence of adults at Florence contrasts with other sites near Newport, where adults of various sea star species persist but where juveniles are the ones absent.

However, finding adults and juveniles in separate locations could be attributed to a characteristic of some sea star species' life cycles: Juvenile stars start out life as zooplankton that drift on ocean currents, which can carry them away far from their parents' breeding site.

Stuart Clausen, the aquarium's assistant curator of fishes and invertebrates, said the find doesn't mean sea star species in Oregon are out of the woods yet, "but it is encouraging. It means some adults survived or at least put viable gametes in the water before being affected."

Because of their small size, the juvenile sea stars at Florence haven't been identified yet to species, but aquarium staff will be monitoring their development and trying to identify them in the coming months.

Species that have been ravaged on Oregon's coast include the local sunflower (Pycnopodia helianthoides), false ochre (Evasterias troschelii), giant pink (Pisaster brevispinus) and ochre (Pisaster ochraceus).

In other science news (for the week ending Oct. 25, 2014):

First, some "programming notes," if you will: This week's science roundup is going to be a bit of a quick-hitter because a vacation is looming, and in news organization land that means, I'm working on not one but two posts this week, so you'll have some science fodder to read also on Nov. 2. That future post won't round up science news from the week ending Nov. 1 because, well, I'm not clairvoyant. (No one is, according to science, and there will be something relevant to this point in the Nov. 2 post.) Instead, it'll be a short collection of some random science items you might enjoy.

Also, if you enjoy reading about GMO science, you should look for an Oct. 26 post of a question-and-answer session with Oregon State University scientist Steve Strauss.

And soon, the roundups will shift from spanning a Sunday-to-Saturday week of science news to a Thursday-to-Thursday cycle. (They'll still post on Sundays, though.)

Now onto the regularly scheduled science roundup ...

— Oregonians for Science and Reason, a science and skepticism group, will gather at 5 p.m. Oct. 26 at Lucky Lab's north tap room, 1700 N. Killingsworth St., Portland. The meet-up will feature a short program (topic not announced) and conversation, and because it's in a brew pub, there will be beer for folks who like some suds with their science. Find the group in the tap room's party room. For folks further south, O4SR also is planning a meet-up for 6 p.m. Nov. 11 at Falling Sky Pour House and Deli in Eugene (790 Blair Blvd.). Go to O4SR's website for more information. (O4SR, Skeptoid.com, Lucky Lab, Falling Sky)

— Portland State University is getting a $24 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to help train more diverse science and health researchers by providing scholarships, stipends, paid research gigs and mentoring to students who are from Latino, Pacific Islander, Alaska native, African-American, Native American and low-income backgrounds; who were raised in foster care; or who have a disability. (The Oregonian)

— Grays Harbor County in Washington will soon become the first spot in the United States to have a vertical tsunami shelter. The shelter will be part of a school building to be completed next year. The structure will be able to hold about 1,000 people living in a 20-minute walking distance from it. Twenty to 30 minutes is the amount of time Northwest coastal residents are expected to have to get to safety in the event of a tsunami generated by an earthquake in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, off the Oregon and Washington coasts. (Popular Science)

— Feel like a drive to check out how biochar is made? The South Umpqua Rural Community Parntership will hold a demonstration from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Nov. 3 at a site near Tiller, southeast of Roseburg. They'll be showing how materials from forest thinning can be converted into char for use in land management and ecological applications — from slope stabilization and soil development to filtering runoff and sequestering carbon. For directions and more information, contact Jim Long at 541-673-3713 or jblong@dcwisp.net. (SURCP)

— The oldest DNA retrieved so far from a Homo sapiens bone is shedding light on how our species populated the planet. (France 24, in English)

— You might have heard that a doctor in New York City has tested positive for Ebola after returning to the United States following a round of treating patients in West Africa, but have you also heard that Ebola is not airborne? Nope, not one bit. You can read about the persistent misconception of airborne transmission and other Ebola fallacies in a New York Times piece by the daddy of all science writers, Carl Zimmer. (And, yes, I'm a bit of a fangirl.) (The Oregonian, The New York Times, CarlZimmer.com)

— Numbers of female computer science majors are down, leaving some to wonder what happened to all the women in computer science? One explanation is that the rise of personal computers in the 1980s and the perception of them as "boys' toys" may have done a number on a generation of would-be female computer scientists. You know, as if girls and women don't face enough challenges when it comes to being encouraged to pursue science, technology, engineering and math education and careers ... (Smithsonian.com, U.S. News and World Report)

— Finally, sorry, but it's time for a little bit of sham-research schadenfreude, Dr. Oz style. A study that purported to test the efficacy of a weight loss supplement called green coffee extract has been ... wait for it ... wait for it ... RETRACTED. The extract, of course, is one example of the supposedly health products that Dr. Mehmet Oz has endorsed or promoted to viewers of his "Dr. Oz Show," of which, you might have guessed, I am not a fan. (DovePress.com, Popular Science, The Oregonian)

— Susannah L. Bodman, sbodman@oregonian.com, Twitter: @Sciwhat, www.facebook.com/Sciwhat.Science (Psst. Even though I'll be on vacation, you might still find additional science news posted or shared on that Facebook page throughout the week — just because I'm a nerd who loves to share.)