HARLINGEN, Texas - A combination of weather conditions has stranded thousands of starfish along the beaches of an island in South Texas, near the border with Mexico.
High winds, rough seas and strong currents caused the mass stranding of the marine creatures at South Padre Island, east of Brownsville, the Valley Morning Star of Harlingen reported.
The starfish live on the sandbar system near the beaches of Harlingen. They started washing ashore Jan. 26.
It was initially thought that the beaching was caused by lower-than-usual water temperatures blamed on the cold weather affecting the area. However, Tony Reisinger, Cameron County extension agent with Texas Sea Grant at Texas A&M University, said Dr. David Hicks, chairman of the biological sciences department at the University of Texas at Brownsville, offered a more-thorough explanation.
Hicks cited a combination of weather factors and the possibility that the starfish were feeding in shallow waters at the time.
Reisinger wrote on the Texas Coastal Naturalist Facebook page that there are three other instances of mass mortalities of Gray sea stars in the northern Gulf of Mexico reported in unpublished literature.
Front Section, Pages 12 on 02/02/2014