FALCON POWERS – The mass death of sea urchins is causing concern among scientists as it increasingly turns into a global pandemic. Scientists have now been able to identify the deadly disease in the Indian Ocean, as reported by a research team in the journal Current Biology. Photos circulating among scientists show countless dead sea urchins on the shores of Reunion Island, where the spread of the disease poses a direct threat to coral reefs around the world, as sea urchins feed on the algae that can overgrow and kill coral reefs.
Mass mortality of the “Diadema setosum” species of sea urchins was first observed near the US Virgin Islands in January 2022. Over the following months, similar observations were made across large parts of the Caribbean Sea, then the disease spread to the Mediterranean Sea and soon affected the Red Sea as well.
However, a scientific team led by Dr. Omri Bronstein from Tel Aviv University was able to identify the pathogenic agent responsible for the mass mortality of the common “Diadema setosum” species of long-spined black sea urchins in the Red Sea.
The team said that a single-celled parasite is the cause of the mass mortality of sea urchins in the Red Sea, which was the cause of the death of their Atlantic counterparts (Diadema antillarum) in the Caribbean region since the 1980s, and their numbers have not recovered there even after about 40 years, nor have the coral reefs in the Caribbean region fully recovered to their former state.
The ARAB scientific team assumes that this parasite, which was previously identified, is the reason behind the decline in the number of sea urchins in the Red Sea and Mediterranean regions now. According to the research team, this type of ciliate parasite also attacks another species of sea urchin called Echinothrix.
The parasite causes the sea urchins to become empty shells without tissues within just two days, unless the predatory organisms consume these urchins before that. The scientific team points out that this parasite is transmitted through water and can affect wide areas in a very short time. In this context, Dr. Bronshtein says that the stability of the coral reefs off Israel and near the borders with Jordan and Egypt is now threatened to an unprecedented degree. Data from the Red Sea showed that the disease is spreading along human transportation routes.
