New California Academy of Sciences research could help sea star recovery along Bay Area coastline

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Recent discoveries could help researchers at the California Academy of Sciences restore the Bay Area coastline.

At the heart of it, are a threatened species of sea stars, who could be the new sheriff in town for a critical habitat now under attack.

If you're going to make a splashy entrance, timing is everything -- and the recent arrival of sunflower sea stars at the California Academy of Sciences couldn't have hit it much better.

The sea star population has been decimated along the Northern California coast for more than a decade. Academy scientists have been working on ways to bolster their numbers, finally catching a break when a separate research team pinpointed the bacteria that's been killing the Stars.

"Yeah, it's really impactful -- not only for research -- and for our own knowledge to better understand the star-wasting disease, and how it could potentially affect future populations," said Kylie Lev, senior curator at the Academy's Steinhart Aquarium.

MORE: California Academy of Sciences researchers breed sea stars to help protect coastal ecosystem

The new sunflower sea stars, transferred from Alaska, are now on display at the popular aquarium. But in a backroom, filled with breeding tanks and swirling spatulas, Lev is also part of an Academy team that's breeding new stars for potential reintroduction.

"So those are also sunflower stars," she said, pointing to tiny dots floating in tub. "So there are tens of thousands on this table. You know, in this bucket alone, if you look at every single little dot, you can see if you get really close. You can see some even have that star pattern."

She said the stars are a key predator along the Bay Area coast. And their disappearance set off a disastrous chain reaction. Allowing their prey, in this case, hungry purple sea urchins, to explode in numbers and eventually gobble up miles of critical kelp forests. Now, resetting the balance could require reintroducing more stars and perhaps selecting for survivors who have some immunity to the marine bacteria.

"Without really understanding the causative agent, it would have been very challenging to move forward with any kind of reintroduction without knowing that really huge variable that's affecting them," Lev said.

For evolutionary biologist Elora Lopez-Nandam, Ph.D., understanding factors, like genetics and tolerance, to shifting marine environments, is also key to helping the Sunflower Sea Stars recover. She recently returned from a trip to Honduras, where a field team is applying some of the same techniques in a program to breed endangered Coral. She believes researchers will now be able to use their knowledge of the deadly bacteria to collect and breed more resilient stars.

MORE: California Academy of Sciences researchers breed sea stars to help protect coastal ecosystem

"We suspect that those ones are perhaps ones that have survived past outbreaks. And so, now my hope is that we can start to figure out why those ones survived and, you know, potentially breed them to get more vibrio-tolerant offspring into the water in the future," said Lopez-Nandam.

Academy teams are already planning to soak test some of their lab-grown sea stars along the coast in the near future -- testing their adaptability and survivability in the natural environment -- ultimately, working towards a day when populations recover, and help restore the delicate balance, that's critical to maintaining the kelp and our coastal habitat.

"And we're hoping that sunflower stars being more present in areas where they historically were, and currently are not, will help provide more balance to the ecosystem and another variable to help support the recovery of, of kelp," Lev said.

To put the challenge into perspective, it's estimated that northern California has lost 95% of its kelp forest since the 2014 -- much of that attributed to the loss of the sea stars.