Little Sea Stars with Big Importance

May 21, 2025

Guests visiting the Aquarium’s new Stars of the Sea experience can see a one-year-old sunflower sea star in the Rocky Reef exhibit in the Northern Pacific Gallery. This small, seemingly “baby” star has a special story. This young sea star was born on Valentine’s Day 2024 and is part of a critical breeding program that hopes to save sunflower sea stars from extinction.

This program is a partnership between the Aquarium of the Pacific, the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, California Academy of Sciences, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (SDZWA), and Sunflower Star Laboratory.

Sunflower sea stars are considered a keystone species in kelp forest ecosystems due to their natural predation on sea urchins. By consuming sea urchins, sunflower sea stars help keep their populations in balance, which prevents urchins from overeating kelp. This helps protect kelp forests, which provide a vital habitat for marine life and benefits for humans such as producing oxygen, absorbing carbon, and protecting coastlines.

The population for this kelp forest guardian plummeted due to sea star wasting syndrome, leading to sunflower stars becoming functionally extinct along the coast of California in 2013. Billions of sunflower sea stars died in only a few years. The sunflower sea star’s historical range extends from Alaska to Baja Mexico, but there is no range-wide population estimate. Experts documented five sunflower sea star sightings in 2023 in Northern California, the first since 2015. Aquarium staff discovered several in a recent dive earlier this year.

The Aquarium of the Pacific is part of ongoing conservation efforts with the goal of rebuilding the number of sunflower sea stars in California. This includes the Aquarium of the Pacific’s role as one of the founding partners of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) SAFE sunflower sea star program. The Aquarium is also focused on sunflower sea star conservation through its role as a founding member of the Pacific Coast Ocean Restoration Initiative (PCOR), a comprehensive, collaborative statewide effort aimed at restoring and recovering degraded marine ecosystems across California such as kelp forest ecosystems.

For those interested in learning more about the sunflower sea star, you can visit the Conservation Corner in the spring 2025 digital issue of Pacific Currents.