Mass starfish dieoff: Sea star began “ripping itself into pieces” — Like a horror movie

The Press Democrat (Santa Barbara), Nov. 2, 2013 (Emphasis Added): [...] The affliction, called sea star wasting disease, has killed up to 95 percent of the stars in some tide pool populations ranging from southeast Alaska to Santa Barbara in a manner similar to scenes from a horror movie. “They essentially melt in front of you,” said Pete Raimondi, chairman of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz’s Long Marine Lab. [...] The disease has struck localized coastal areas before [...] but is already far more widespread, and its full extent is unknown. “We’ve never seen it at this scale up and down the coast,” Raimondi said. [...]