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Fiona Curliss, a research assistant for Jason Hodin's research lab at Friday Harbor Laboratories, feeds the adult sunflower sea stars that are a part of the first-ever captive-breeding program for echinoderms. After a mysterious wasting disease began ripping through sea stars along the West Coast, sunflower sea star numbers dropped so rapidly, that they went form common to critically endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. In response, Hodin embarked on a captive breeding program to boost their numbers even as the disease and its causes remain a unknown. Sunflower sea stars are gregarious and curious, each having "personalities." At one tank a particularly curious sea star latched onto her finger and a gentle waiting game ensued in the hopes that Corliss could extricate herself without pulling off any of the sea star's tube feet. Fiona Curliss contact: 971-273-8245