VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- Starfish are shedding limbs and rotting away from a mystery disease decimating starfish populations on both coasts of North America, marine scientists say.
Researchers in Canada and the United States studying the phenomenon, dubbed "sea star wasting syndrome," say they have no idea what is causing it.
"Their flesh deteriorates and there's nothing to hold them together," Donna Gibbs, a diver and taxonomist at the Vancouver Aquarium in British Columbia told NBC News. "That's as technical as it gets right now."
Divers found sunflower sea stars -- brilliant orange 3-foot wide creatures with as many as 24 arms -- dying beginning is September on coasts along western Canada and the U.S. northwest.
U.S. East Coast die-offs have been increasing since 2010, researchers said.
"A year after that we started seeing animals that have been exhibiting this 'wasting disease,'" Gary Wessel, a professor at Brown University studying the disease, said. "It appears to have [been] developing over the past few years."
The disease has been fund to be contagious between individual animals and between species of sea stars.
Research so far suggests the likely suspect is a bacterium or a virus rather than a chemical or environmental factor in the ocean, Wessel said.
What is unknown at this time is how the disease has managed to spread and show up on both coasts of North America, he said.
"The spread -- that's a little bit scary for me," Wessel said.
