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The Sequoia Park Zoo’s fifteenth Conservation Lecture Series continues Wednesday, December 10, 2025, at 7PM PST, hosted by the Sequoia Park Zoo Advisory Group’s Conservation Council. Cal Poly Humboldt faculty Drs. David Sinn, Rafael Cuevas Uribe, and Sean Craig discuss their mission to save the critically endangered sunflower sea star and how students play an important role in their conservation efforts in their talk entitled “Saving the Sunflower Seastar: Students Making Waves in Conservation.”
In 2013, sea star wasting syndrome (SSWS) began devastating sea star populations along the west coast of the Americas. This syndrome impacted sunflower stars, a keystone predator in rocky reefs - which are now considered functionally extinct. Since then, many incredibly biodiverse and productive kelp ecosystems have become low biodiversity ecosystems dominated by purple sea urchins. Restoring sunflower stars along the west coast of North America is a critical component of the restoration of kelp forests in these same areas, since sunflower stars serve as keystone predators, protecting kelp forests from overgrazing by urchins. Restoration requires knowledge of life history and aquaculture, since any wild reintroductions will have to come from captive individuals. Their research began when two undergraduate students in Cuevas-Uribe's mariculture course asked what it would take to do research with sunflower sea stars. With funding from the Sequoia Park Zoo Conservation Grant, they were able to design and construct an echinoderm nursery system at the Telonicher Marine Lab. This system has since been used to rear larvae of sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and sea stars. In 2024, they received six juvenile sunflower sea stars from Moss Landing Marine Labs, and in September 2025, they acquired an additional 15 sea stars from the California Academy of Sciences. In this talk, they will detail the idea and implementation of an 'insurance population' of sea stars in Humboldt, give the latest information on SSWS, and outline the prospects for future restoration of sea stars along local coastlines.
The 2025-2026 Conservation Lecture Series will be held in-person and remotely through Zoom. The in-person lecture is located at the Sequoia Park Zoo’s Flamingo Room at 3414 W Street in Eureka. Attendees can enter the Zoo through Gate C, located to the left of the main gate at the W Street crosswalk.
The event begins with refreshments and a Zoo update slideshow at 6:45 PM. The lecture starts promptly at 7:00 PM. Attendees are encouraged to ask the speaker questions after the presentation.
Virtual attendees can watch on Zoom (where a free, registered Zoom account is required). A link will be available at redwoodzoo.org and on the Zoo’s social media channels on the day of the lecture.
Zoom Meeting:
https://zoom.us/join
Meeting ID: 816 8377 5123
Passcode: 187432
Join the Zoom Meeting by Phone: +1 669 444 9171
Photos provided by Rafael Cuevas Uribe (left) and David Sinn (right).
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