The sea as design

How natural is the sea, if we want to rewrite it? That question arises after new research, reported by the Natural History Museum. It identifies Vibrio pectenicida as the culprit behind the largest underwater epidemic ever recorded: the mass death of starfish.

Since 2013, starfish along the American West Coast have been disappearing in large numbers, dissolving into slime. No oil spill, no plastic soup, but an invisible enemy, a bacterium that causes their bodies to fall apart. This mysterious plague is known as Sea Star Wasting Disease. The death toll runs into the billions, and ecosystems are being thrown out of balance. Without starfish, kelp forests disappear and entire food chains risk collapsing.

The identification of Vibrio pectenicida as the cause is a scientific breakthrough, but it also reveals something about our relationship with nature. We can no longer see it as something separate from ourselves. The urge to act is logical: we want to fight the bacterium, save the starfish, restore the ecosystem. Yet in that very act, the rewriting begins.

The ocean as a laboratory
The rewriting of the sea does not stop with the starfish. We also construct artificial coral reefs with 3D-printed structures. In addition, we are creating digital oceans: so-called Digital Twins of the Ocean. These are digital copies of the sea, powered by sensors, satellites, and algorithms that make predictions. They allow us to detect disturbances in ecosystems and to test measures virtually before carrying them out in the real ocean.

Protecting means editing
Is the ocean still wild, or is it becoming more and more a system that we decode? And if we can detect its diseases, genetically manipulate it, or even treat it preventively, are we designing a sea made to measure? What does it mean to protect nature if we must first alter it?

The dissolving starfish makes clear how care and control increasingly overlap. It is not only a victim, but also a mirror of ourselves: humanity as a natural force, one that now seeks to rewrite the sea itself.