Field Notes: Sea Stars (aka Starfish) (Patreon)

Our lead producer and cinematographer, Josh Cassidy, has filmed plenty of sea stars, also known as starfish, over the course of his career. "But I’d never seen one bounce before until I saw some footage online that researchers Amy Johnson and Olaf Ellers of Bowdoin College had posted online," said Josh. "For an animal without a heart or brain, the starfish are remarkably charismatic and the bounce in their step is just adorable."

Johnson and Ellers are working with Eva Kanso, a mechanical engineer at the University of Southern California, to figure out how the sea stars are able to coordinate their hundreds of feet without a central brain to set the pace.

"I knew this was just the sort of thing that would make a great Deep Look episode: a familiar animal doing something most people had never seen."

This episode was fairly challenging for Josh to shoot because the COVID pandemic struck just as he was about to start filming. He'd originally arranged to film at the Aquarium of the Bay and at the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Long Marine Laboratory, but when both of those institutions went into lockdown –– it seemed like the episode wouldn’t be possible to produce.

But marine biologist Allison Gong was able to bring some of the stars from Long Marine Lab to a friend’s backyard. They were able to set up naturalistic-looking habitats inside tanks to film the close-ups.

"We just had to hurry because it was a warm day, and when the stars get warm –– they get really lazy. So it was a race to set up the tanks, film and then return the stars to their home at the lab."

Josh also got a chance to film some stars in their natural home at the Pillar Point tide pools in Half Moon Bay. "I got my start filming in tide pools years ago, so I always feel at home out on the rocks."

Photo credits: Josh Cassidy/KQED