WARNING: Please Do Not Touch Starfish!
This plea is addressed to all tourists: Please do not touch starfish, and kindly inform your guests about this.
What happens when we lift a starfish out of the water for a quick photo?
Starfish are covered all over their bodies with dermal gills. Carbon dioxide is exchanged between the fluid in the starfish’s body cavity and the surrounding water. In principle, this is how they breathe—similar to having hundreds of tiny noses all over their body.
Because fresh air is toxic to starfish and they cannot hold their breath for long, every time they are lifted out of the water for a photo, they suffocate and suffer from a buildup of carbon dioxide. It is akin to briefly pumping water into human lungs and expecting them to just breathe it back out—definitely not a pleasant experience! If this happens repeatedly, it is pure luck whether the poor animal dies of suffocation or from the extreme stress of repeatedly almost drowning.
Wildlife is not our toy. Just because an animal is slow enough to be picked up by human hands does not give us the right to do so, and the social media attention gained certainly does not justify the harm caused to the animal.
Many of us may have been guilty of this at some point, not realizing what was happening to the animal in that moment. But now that we know better, we must do better.
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