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This undated photo released by the Rocky Intertidal Lab at UC Santa Cruz shows a starfish suffering from "sea star wasting disease." It's missing one arm and has tissue damage to another. Marine scientists are finding many dead starfish along the West Coast, but just one has been found in Oregon.

(AP Photo/Laura Anderson, Rocky Intertidal Lab UC Santa Cruz)

Though a mysterious die-off is affecting starfish from Alaska to Southern California, just one dying starfish site has been found on Oregon's coast, in a tide pool like these near Yachats. Scientists will survey again in January.

Starfish, those purple and orange icons of Oregon’s coastal tide pools, are dying on the West Coast in big numbers, wasting away, losing arms and simply turning to mush.

They’re falling victim to a morose marine mystery, one that’s barely touched the Oregon coast – so far.

Just one suffering starfish site has been found in Oregon. Elsewhere, surveying underwater in Puget Sound and Monterey Bay, researchers have seen colonies of starfish quickly die and disintegrate into white goo. Deaths have been confirmed from Alaska to Southern California.

Scientists don't know what's causing the problem, whether it's bacteria, a toxin, something that's been discharged in the water or ocean acidification. They've termed the outbreak "sea star wasting disease." (Scientists now call starfish "sea stars" because they aren't fish.)

Starfish die-offs have happened before in Southern California in 1983-1984 and 1997-1998, when El Niño events turned ocean waters warmer than normal. But those events were localized, only affecting portions of the population. That made it easier for starfish to recover.

Scientists say they've never seen a die-off of this magnitude. It's spread through most of the starfish's range, which stretches from Alaska to Baja California. And it's affecting several starfish species including pisaster, the five-armed, orange and purple starfish commonly seen on the Oregon coast.

Broad outbreaks can pose recovery risks. A die-off in the Gulf of California in Mexico between 1976-1978 killed 99 percent of one species of starfish there, said Pete Raimondi, chairman of UC Santa Cruz’s ecology and evolutionary biology department. More than 30 years later, the population still hasn’t recovered because the die-off affected the species’ whole range.

And that has scientists keenly watching Oregon to see whether it will continue to be an exception to the outbreak and a potential stronghold for an eventual recovery. The wasting starfish found in Oregon were discovered in April in a tide pool at Tokatee Klootchman State Natural Site, about eight miles south of Yachats. Summer surveys along Oregon's coast didn't find any dying starfish, but they happened before the biggest outbreaks, Raimondi said.

A team of researchers is planning to survey Oregon’s coast again in late January. Raimondi said he doubts Oregon starfish will somehow be isolated from the outbreak. “If it does turn out to be the exception to the outbreak, it would be a very important piece of the puzzle,” he said.

Raimondi doesn't believe the die-off is connected to any toxins in Japanese tsunami debris or radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, but he said those sources haven't been ruled out either.

Divers or tidepoolers can submit reports of sick or healthy starfish to crowd-sourced efforts at inaturalist.org and sickstarfish.com.

-- Rob Davis