Friday Harbor, WashingtonOn a boat dock over the calm, cobalt waters of Washington State's Salish Sea, Jason Hodin raises a rope that pulls a perforated container the size of a milk carton from its resting place a few feet below the surface.

Peeking inside, the marine biologist confirms a hopeful development: After three weeks submerged in salt water, his little sunflower sea stars, are still alive.

“Amazingly, they’re doing pretty well,” says Hodin, a senior science researcher at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories, a field station situated along a pine-fringed bluff in the San Juan Islands, some 75 miles northwest of Seattle. “This is the first pass of whether or not sea stars born