The Sea Star Wasting Syndrome is thought to have caused the largest mass die off of a single species in recorded history - an epidemic affecting sea stars up and down the North American Pacific Coast, ranging from the Baja Peninsula to Alaska! In this disease, which was eventuality diagnosed as Densovirus, stars would develop lesions that rapidly degraded tissue until their bodies simply melted away. It was determined that this disease had been present in star populations as early as 1942, so the question is why should it have this kind of impact in 2013 and 2014? Warmer ocean temperatures may have triggered this event, but other factors such as overpopulation, polluted and ocean acidification may have contributed as well. Stars play an important role as a keystone species in the marine environment, keeping certain species like mussels and sea urchins in check. In fact, the purple sea urchin population has exploded, resulting in the decimation of the kelp forests upon which they feed - an important habitat for so much of our marine life! It is the hope is that the surviving baby stars will have developed some immunity to the disease and there have been promising reports in 2016 of an explosion in the numbers of a baby stars on the scene!

In this painting (which I keep renaming - Seeing Stars, Wasting Stars, Falling Stars), I wanted to paint a star shaped void into which the stars were falling a black hole of disease which unchecked could cause disequilibrium in our marine environment.