The photos and description could ruin your appetite, so I tagged this post nsfw

Scientists say they have found the cause behind the disease that turns vibrant, 24-armed sea stars into puddles of goo.

Melanie Prentice, a research scientist at the Hakai Institute, is part of a team that has spent years investigating the cause of this disease. Their research was published on Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

“The agent is a bacteria. It’s called Vibrio pectinicida,” Prentice told CBC News.

After a decade of these creatures being pushed to the brink of extinction, experts say this is the first step in a road to recovery, not just for this species, but for a critical support in humanity’s defence against climate change.

The most affected species are sunflower sea stars, which once boasted a range along the west coast of North America, from Baja California to Alaska.

Then, in 2013, a mass die-off occurred from sea star wasting disease.

And it’s a gruesome end.

“Their arms kind of twist back on themselves, so they get kind of into puzzle pieces,” said Alyssa Gehman, a marine disease ecologist who is also part of the Hakai Institute research team.

They then tend to lose their arms, and then, “their arms will sort of walk away from their bodies.”

Soon after, Gehman says that lesions form and the sea stars dissolve and die.

The paper estimates that more than 87 per cent of sunflower sea stars in northern parts of the west coast have been killed. In the southern habitat ranges, the species is considered functionally extinct.

“When it first happened, it was just fields and fields of puddles of dying sea star goo,” said Sara Hamilton, science co-ordinator for the Oregon Kelp Alliance. Hamilton was not involved in the research.

“It was like something out of a horror movie.”