Sunflower Stars Released in San Juan Islands
Derek Suring | Published on 8/21/2024
University of Washington researchers have been raising the many-legged bottom dwellers in seawater tanks at Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island since 2019.
In July and August, that effort produced its first real-world benefit for the troubled species. Divers lowered two plastic tubs with 10 animals each to an eelgrass meadow off the lab's dock at Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.
The animals, each between 1 and 3 years old and ranging in size from a cookie to a dinner plate, slithered out of the tubs on thousands of tube feet and into the surrounding kelp and eelgrass.
“They were kind of crawling over each other to get out,” research scientist Jason Hodin said. “It was like they had never been out in the wild, but they couldn't wait to get out there and explore.”
Read more at KUOW.org.