When Kathleen Reed descended for her usual weekly dive off the coast of Nanaimo, B.C., last Saturday she was shocked by how many dead sea cucumbers she saw.
Reed has completed more than 500 dives and says she’d never seen so many of the deep red echinoderms turned pale, limp and slimy.
“There were hundreds of them. They were just white and dead in various states of decay, littered all over the sea floor. It was shocking and really disturbing to see,” said Reed.
Experts and harvesters fear that sea cucumbers found off the coast of Vancouver Island are being hit by an illness similar to sea star wasting disease, which swept through the B.C. population in 2015 and 2016, killing 96 per cent of the creatures.
A healthy sunflower sea star sits on cold water coral formations in Puget Sound. Research shows 5.75 billion sea stars along the West Coast have died in recent years. (Greg Amptman/Shutterstock)
Sunflower sea stars were hit particularly hard. It’s estimated that some 5.7 billion sunflower sea stars died, bringing the species close to extinction.
Symptoms first appeared as pale blotchy lesions or white spots on the skin and ended with the animal dissolving.
The symptoms are similar to those now affecting sea cucumbers along the B.C. coast.
Sea stars and sea cucumbers are both echinoderms or spiny-skinned creatures. While sea stars hunt, sea cucumbers are bottom feeders; they act like a garbage truck, eating organic detritus — or waste — found in the sea floor sediment.
Biologists are studying why hundreds of sea cucumbers appear to be dying off near the coast of Vancouver Island. Some fear the echinoderms have been stricken with a wasting disease similar to that which killed off billions of sea stars in the last decade. (Kathleen Reed)
Sea cucumbers perform an important ecological role and could help clean up aquaculture sites, according to Emaline Montgomery, a research scientist at the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo.
More study is needed to determine what’s causing this mass mortality event, but climate change is likely part of the explanation.
Montgomery said that warmer water temperatures could play a role in stressing the animals, which may make them more susceptible to pathogens or viruses.
“Usually when sea cucumbers get stressed they might start to exhibit these bizarre symptoms where their outer body wall turns white. It gets kind of mucousy. It literally looks like their skin is disintegrating or melting,” she said.
A sea star consumes the remains of a sea cucumber that appears to be wasting or melting off the shores of Nanaimo, B.C. (Kathleen Reed)
Seven years ago, sea cucumber wasting was reported in Friday Harbour in Washington state and near Admiralty Island in Alaska. Since then it’s been noticed near one Washington aquaculture farm as well as in Howe Sound, near Sechelt, B.C.
A study last year led by Ian Hewson, a Cornell University biological oceanographer and expert in viruses of the sea, described an Alaskan outbreak.
Those sea cucumbers were stricken with “lesions and fissures and sloughing of epidermal tissues,” then rapid “liquefaction.”
Global market for sea cucumbers
Canada does about $30-million in sea cucumber trade. B.C. has about a one-third share of that market.
Thom Liptrot, president of the Pacific Sea Cucumber Harvesters Association, says divers pick the prickled creatures along about half the B.C. coast.
B.C. has approved 85 licensed fishers who are allowed to take 16,000 pounds or 7,200 kilograms each, according to Liptrot.
Dried sea cucumber is shipped to China where it is used to treat everything from arthritis to heart disease and boost virility. Fresh sea cucumber can be flash-fried in garlic and butter and tastes “somewhere between a clam and a squid,” Liptrot said.
Otters and sea stars also enjoy eating sea cucumbers, which sometimes escape by rolling.
This sea cucumber has turned partially white instead of its usual deep brick-red hue. It’s not yet clear why this is happening. (Kathleen Reed)
Liptrot has had reports of dead sea cucumbers near Comox and Sechelt and now fears the elongated echinoderms are being hit by a wasting disease similar the one that nearly wiped out sea stars along the B.C. coast.
“[The wasting disease] has been around a long time and it’s taken out sea cucumbers before — but never a mass extinction like the sun star,” he said.
‘If we lose the vacuum cleaners of the sea … we are in trouble’
Reed, an avid naturalist and diver, recalls seeing a few sea stars stricken with wasting disease, but said last Saturday’s discovery was more devastating.
On her Aug. 28 dive Reed said that every sea cucumber she saw between the depths of 10 and 25 metres appeared dead. She checked three spots that day: Dolphin Beach, Tyee Cove and Wall Beach, near Parksville.
Hundreds of sea cucumbers stricken with some affliction appear to be turning white and dying off the coast near Nanaim,o all the way to Nanoose Bay and Parksville, B.C. (Kathleen Reed)
While Reed did see some mottled animals after the heat waves earlier this summer, she said they now appear to be “just kind of melting in place” and littering the sea from Madrona Point all the way to Blueback Community Park — spanning the entire Nanoose Bay Peninsula.
“It was really, really concerning. I don’t think I’ve ever been so concerned while diving. If those guys go — if we lose the vacuum cleaners of the sea — we are really in trouble,” she said.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
