Pizza-sized predators to get federal protection

The world’s fastest sea star could get a little boost from the U.S. government.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has proposed listing the sunflower star as a threatened species, which could lead federal agencies to block projects that would harm its habitats and unlock funding for research on how to save the species.

The pizza-sized predator with up to two dozen arms has been unable to outrun the world’s worst underwater pandemic.

A wasting disease has turned 20 species of sea stars into goo from Alaska to Mexico. None has been hit harder than the sunflower star, a once-dominant predator on Pacific Coast seafloors and in kelp forests.

“Sea star wasting syndrome” — scientists’ placeholder name for what remains a mystery illness — has killed 5 billion sunflower stars, or 90% of their global population, over the past decade.