NPR · 5 hours ago

Bacteria Killed Billions of Sea stars. a Northwest Tribe Has Stepped in to Help

After a bacterial pandemic - worsened by climate-driven ocean heat waves - killed an estimated 90% of the Pacific's sunflower sea stars, dissolving billions of them into goo, a team of University of Washington researchers and the Samish Indian Nation began the painstaking work of raising the critically endangered species by hand, one named star at a time. The partnership runs deeper than conservation: the Samish, a tribe that never received a reservation or fishing rights due to a federal clerical error, are rebuilding a homeland through the restoration of the ecosystems that sustain it, including the kelp forests that their deity Ko-Kwal-Alwoot - a young woman whose hair became bull kelp - has long embodied. When lab biologist Sam Strauss finally watched a sunflower star glide out of its tub and touch natural seafloor for the first time, he said simply, "I was just so grateful to see these stars, healthy, happy in the water." That gratitude carries the full weight of the story: years of trial and error, a release postponed by disease, a tribe still fighting for a place to come home to. What emerges is something quietly remarkable - the way caring for a brainless, faceless creature with eyespots at the tips of its arms can become an act of cultural survival, ecological repair, and profound human devotion all at once.