Student from Black Diamond to assist with Sea Star study

From Alaska to Southern California, something is killing the West Coast’s sea stars ­– the ubiquitous, child-friendly favorite of tide-pool explorers everywhere –­ and nobody knows why.

Yet.

Benjamin Miner, as associate professor of Biology at Western Washington University, has received, along with his colleague Ian Hewson, a geneticist at Cornell University, a one-year research grant from the National Science Foundation to begin to explore the potential reasons for the region’s dramatic loss of sea stars due to what is known as Sea Star Wasting Disease. Undergraduate biology student Warren Kohl from Black Diamond will be working alongside Minder during the project.