Northern Pacific Seastar Research Paper

What is the Northern Pacific Seastar (Asterias Amurensis)?
The Northern Pacific seastar is a 40 to 50 large predator that is found in Australia and other countries. These sea stars have five arms and each of these arms joins in the center of the organism to form a central disc. They can show a different types of colors, from orange to yellow, and sometimes purple. It also has a row of spines from each arm that comes together near the mouth area. These sea stars are generally found close to shore on either mud, sand or pebble substrates but can live in depths up to 200 metres.

They are known to be voracious predators that essentially eats any type of animal that they encounter. They eat bivalves, mussels, scallops and clams. They are known …show more content…
The northern pacific seastar can produce up to 20 million eggs per adult female and live for up to five years. In 1993 there was more than 30,000 sea stars in Tasmania therefore volunteers worked together to physically remove as many of the sea stars as possible. Hunting days have been organized and during the first attempts to remove the seastars many of the sea stars that were captured were cut up and thrown back into the sea. Unfortunately, each part that was thrown back was able to regenerate and grow a new seastar as long as it had part of the central disc remaining.

“In the year 2000, it was estimated that there were 165 million seastars in the Bay. The seastar took hold in the Bay very quickly because: they had no natural predators, they had plenty of food (native shellfish) and they reproduced extremely rapidly, with each female producing up to 20 million eggs each year” (Educational Material, Information ). This sea star has already invaded Australian waters in the Derwent Estuary and Henderson Lagoon. Also eradicating the northern pacific seastar can be complicated because they are in the ocean with other types of sea creatures therefore having to find a way to not harm other creatures can be …show more content…
“Typically, lesions appear in the ectoderm followed by decay of tissue surrounding the lesions, which leads to eventual fragmentation of the body and death. The progression of wasting disease can be rapid, leading to death within a few days, and its effects can be devastating on sea star populations. The proximal cause of the disease, when pathological studies have been done, is typically a bacterium (vibrio), although a recent wasting event on the east coast of the United States has been attributed to a

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Northern Pacific Seastar Research Paper