Today the keystone species we are focusing on is the Sunflower Sea Star. What do you think of first when you hear the word sea star? Maybe you think of the starfish Peach from Finding Nemo or for me, I think of Patrick Star from the show Spongebob Squarepants. Either way, unless you go to the beach fairly often in a place where sea stars are prominent, sea stars don’t really appear on most people’s radars too often. They used to appear a lot though. According to a study done in 2020, the sea star population has been drastically decreasing since 2013. A disease scientist still doesn’t understand, called sea star wasting disease has been decimating local sea star populations from Alaska to Mexico, and has become one of the biggest marine epizootics- a disease outbreak- of the 21st century.