What's Killing the Oregon Sea Star?

Many of the state’s colorful tide-pool treasures are being destroyed by a mysterious wasting syndrome that could drastically change our coastal biodiversity.

It’s 5:30 a.m., and buoy horns cut ominously through the dense fog engulfing Depoe Bay. I’m trudging along the rolling intertidal pools at Fogarty Creek. 

“Are you ready?” Bruce Menge, a professor of integrative biology at Oregon State University, asks me as he pulls waterproof boots and overalls over his jeans. The question sounds like a mere formality, but as I peer into the tide pools I’m not sure I am ready for what I see.

Back in the spring, he says, the tide pools were lined with thousands of healthy sea stars (commonly called starfish). Now, most of the sea stars are gone. The sickly few that remain hang limply from the bedrock, at risk of being crowded out by California mussels.

Since April 2013, a deadly—and unexplained—wasting syndrome has devastated the entire sea star population from British Columbia to Baja California and in turn imperiled the fragile tidal ecosystem. The disease reached Oregon in April 2014, affecting around 50 percent of Fogarty Creek’s sea star population. The total population has dwindled to a fifth of what it was. The symptoms are gruesome: Some develop lesions and become abnormally soft. They begin to disintegrate; their arms detach from their central disc and crawl away on their own. Tissue regeneration is nearly impossible. All of this occurs within two weeks.

Menge is one of four West Coast university principal investigators working with the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO), tracking and searching for implications of the die-off. Scientists still don’t know what causes this fatal unraveling, or how the disease spreads. But they do know that time is running short for some of the Pacific Coast’s most charismatic and ecologically important creatures.

The orange and purple Pisaster ochraceus, also known as ochre sea stars, feed primarily on mussels, which gives room for seaweed, algae, and sea anemones to grow. The OSU team has installed small metal cages in on open rock to help them understand what effect the complete absence of some species of sea stars would have on prey. One thing is certain: without the sea stars Oregon’s coastal biodiversity will change drastically. 

Still, there is some hope that sea star larvae washed in from the ocean will develop into healthy juveniles. Later this day, Angela Johnson, an OSU faculty research assistant, will report that sites a few miles south of Fogarty Creek have only two of 15 healthy adults, but a majority of healthy juveniles and babies. “We are also finding smaller species of sea stars to be more resilient.”

“The scientist in me says the chances of recovery are low given what we have seen,” says Menge. “The optimist in me says that juvenile repopulation is possible.” 

As we make our way back, the fog begins its sluggish ascent. For now, the future of sea stars is at the mercy of the ocean.

Vintage Wallpapers emerge from Portland Company’s Treasure Trove

Bolling & Co.’s stash of early 20th Century wallpapers reveals the depth, beauty, and intricacy of a long-ignored medium.

Walk past the blowing antique fans and gooseneck lamps and up the wooden staircase at Rejuvenation Hardware on SE Grand Ave. Take a left, and enter Bolling & Company, where stacks of musty wallpaper catalogs are warmed by the light of low-hanging gas lamps, and a collection of steel doorknobs hangs in an oblong picture frame resembling a scene out of Alice and Wonderland. In the back, you will find architectural historian, designer, and wallpaper aficionado Bo Sullivan rolling out his freshest scroll.

“The pendulum swings back and forth on the quest for novelty,” says Sullivan. “Wallpaper is on that pendulum. It has made a comeback.”

Sullivan’s love for wallpaper began unexpectedly when he bought two boxes of paper from a couple who showed up at the salvage desk at Rejuvenation, where he worked as a historian, in the mid-'90s. When he later shuffled through the papers, he discovered rare designs valued at $600 to $3,000 today. Many of the scrolls were made by wallpaper king M.H. Birge & Sons, a manufacturer that had its heyday from 1900 to 1920 when wallpaper was a coveted and sophisticated décor.

Sullivan opened his wallpaper gallery in August, and in every available space hang gracefully organized framed clippings of wallpaper that some of his customers use as living room centerpieces. So far, Sullivan has found only six 19th or early 20th Century homes in Portland with full walls of original wallpaper. His gallery is the only one in the country carrying an extensive collection of wallpaper focused on pre-WWII made papers.

Indeed, wallpaper died as a décor between the 1940s and ’50s. The invention of drywall and the paint roller introduced a “do it yourself” culture and the rise of minimalistic design.  

“The most important thing about how paper is made today is that it is not the same,” says Sullivan. “There are only a handful of machines left that still make wallpaper the way it was made before. Even if someone wanted to reproduce these antique papers, it would be cost-prohibitive or impossible.” 

From hand-printed and hand-embossed, pieces in Bolling & Co.’s collection look like tooled leather; a few used the painstaking technique of color block printing. Every piece you touch is textured. Some have geometric patterns, and others are metallic illuminating the space surrounding them.

Curious folks stroll into the gallery and search for the wallpaper they remember from their childhood bedrooms. Sullivan retreats to his flat file drawers and bookshelves and locates the nostalgic piece. Ephemeral décor has become an icon of memory.