© Frieda Squires/The Providence JournalURI Prof. Marta Gomez-Chiarri, with graduate student Caitlin DelSesto, is working to find the cause of the starfish decline in Rhode Island waters.
Starfish, whose fanciful five-armed figure is symbolic of the seashore, have become veritable shooting stars of late - here one moment, gone the next.
Following a boom in their population only a few years ago, starfish have since become so scarce that researchers in Rhode Island are even having difficulty collecting enough of them to study an unidentified disease that may be linked to their die-off.
"It's one of those mystery detective stories," said Marta Gomez-Chiarri, a biology professor at the University of Rhode Island in the department of fisheries, animal and veterinary science.
The case of the disappearing starfish, also known as sea stars, began more than a year ago when Caitlin DelSesto, then an undergraduate student at URI, began collecting starfish for a project on how they respond to ocean acidification, a symptom of climate change.
Comment: This apology seems a hallow token, they knew the risks beforehand and did nothing. It is not just the "grave worries", families now and generations to come will suffer and die from these causes.