The climate crisis is wiping out billions of starfish, the study

Within a few years, thousands of starfish will disappear from our seas. Blame the climate crisis and global warming

He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

Within a few years, thousands of starfish will disappear from our seas. Blame the climate crisis and global warming that are destroying their habitat

A sunflower starfish, like that of the cover image, is now a museum piece. This and many other starfish species are disappearing forever, condemned to death by the climate crisis. A new study conducted by Oregon state university highlights that thousands of starfish species are extinct or close to extinction because the seawater they live in is heating up too fast for these animals to adapt.

The study was conducted starting from observations in the waters off California and Mexico, where the waters are warming at an increasingly rapid rate (other areas of the globe, such as Alaska and British Columbia, still have cold waters, in which life starfish is still possible). Mass extinction has been documented in these areas since 2013, and several previous studies have already shown how rising water temperatures lead to the proliferation of bacteria and viruses, a deadly threat to starfish.

Starfish are present in the sea in different bright colors. The most common have five arms, but they can also have ten, twenty or even forty; while we are used to seeing them small, which fit in the palm of a hand, there are larger species that can reach a diameter of one meter. The climate crisis and global warming are threatening all this biodiversity: within a few years, according to experts, thousands of species we know will no longer exist and the damage to the ecosystem due to their absence is already imagined.

Credits: The Royal Society

The heat of the water attacks the stars, causing them whitening (a phenomenon similar to that observed in coral reef corals) and causing lesions on the surface. These injuries quickly begin to spread all over the body and very often stars lose their arms due to this.

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Fonte: The Royal Society

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