Home

Thursday, February 1
6:00 p.m.

Learn about the work scientists on our coast are doing to understand whether the recovery of the sunflower sea star might help the kelp. After sea star wasting disease killed 90% of Oregon's sea star population, sea urchin populations exploded and kelp forests collapsed. Marine ecologist Sarah Gravem shares how she and collaborators from UC Santa Cruz, University of Oregon, and the Oregon Kelp Alliance are testing if sunflower sea stars create a 'landscape of fear' that could reduce grazing by urchins and help our kelp forests recover.  

Speaker: Sarah Gravem, marine ecologist, Department of Integrative Biology, Oregon State University 

Included with regular admission; free for MNCH members and UO ID card holders. Show your Oregon Trail or other EBT card for an admission discount. 

Sarah Gravem, wearing sunglasses and a white hat, pilots a motorboat in a body of water with a bridge and mountains behind her.
 Photo by Jacob Metzer. Dr. Sarah Gravem headed out to SCUBA dive and study sea urchin barrens and sunflower sea stars in Sitka, Alaska.
A sea star eats an urchin
 Photo by Sarah Gravem. A sunflower sea star (Pycnopodia helianthoides) attacking and swallowing a green sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis) during a laboratory predation trial in Sitka Sound, Alaska in 2021. Notice the small dark purple specks on the sea star's tube feet. These are the urchin's detached pedicellariae, which are claw-like appendages that the sea urchin attacks the star with to defend itself. This defense often causes the sea star to retreat, but it did not work this time!