LAKE WORTH — A disturbing scene met snorkelers in Palm Beach County’s coastal waters — sea stars (also known as starfish) with open wounds, missing limbs and bodies falling apart on the ocean floor.
University of Florida scientists in Fort Lauderdale now confirm the cause as sea star wasting disease (SSWD), marking the first documented case in Florida’s Atlantic coastal waters and in the nine-armed sea star in a study just published in Southeastern Naturalist.
The discovery, made by researchers with the UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS), represents a major expansion of the disease into the Atlantic Ocean. The disease has devastated starfish populations along the North American Pacific coast, from Mexico to Alaska, with significant die-offs in the Channel Islands and Gulf of Alaska, and has also been reported in Antarctica’s McMurdo Sound in 2019 and 2022…