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Studies nationwide about 'sea star wasting syndrome', or the rash of deaths of millions of starfish, have come up with a new explanation this week.

Scientists have been observing the shores of Washington, Oregon, and California in an attempt to figure out why millions of sea stars have been dying since June 2013.

Their conclusion is that sea stars are being infected with a disease that can more easily grow in the Pacific Ocean thanks to warming waters providing a better place to multiply.

A purple ochre sea star dying from sea star wasting syndrome, as evidenced by its mangled body and disintegrating right leg

A sea star in a mangled form underwater. Scientists are trying to determine if the pathogen is traveling freely in the warm waters or if its coming from the mussels and shellfish that sea stars eat

A sunflower star exhibiting signs that its about to lose two of its arms

An arm from a sick sea star detached from the body. This is known as a ray, 'walking away' from the body

According to scientists, the warmer waters not only allow the bacterial/viral infection a more prime place to develop, but also compromise the immune system of the sea stars, allowing them to be more susceptible to the pathogen causing sea star wasting syndrome.

According to research from the University of California Santa Cruz, the disease leaves lesions on the body of sea stars, also causing deformities such as arms disappearing. The end result are carcasses washing to shore in a dried-up, gnarled state.

According to a team monitoring the San Juan Islands, off of the coast of Washington, over 40 percent of starfish are now exhibiting symptoms of having sea star wasting syndrome. That number is expected to rise as the summer progresses.

'It's the largest mortality event for marine diseases we've seen,'  Drew Harvell, a marine epidemiologist at Cornell University, told PBS. 'It affects over 20 species on our coast and it's been causing catastrophic mortality.'

Harvell leads a loose organization of scientists who are struggling to figure out the cause of the mass die-offs. According to her, the warmer Pacific Ocean waters of recent years have facilitated a prime environment for the pathogen to develop.

This would not be the first mass die-off experienced by the sea star population. According to scientists, the sea star population experienced hits during the warmer climate related to El Nino years, particularly 1982-83 and 1997-98. However, these dips in population were never as severe as the current outbreak.

Students of Oregon State University assist in monitoring the intertidal zone by the Oregon coast from sea stars damaged by the disease's outbreak

A diver takes notes on a sea star. The disease is expected to worsen as the summer progresses

'My expectation is that within the next month all of the stars will die.' said Harvell

While some scientists believe that the warmer water is weakening the sensitive skins of sea stars, others believe that the pathogen is traveling to them through the food that they eat becoming infected.

In a test at the University of California Santa Barbara, two groups of sea stars were fed differently, the first receiving mussels from the same area of the ocean, while the other group was given frozen squid.

The group given the frozen squid to eat did not develop the disease, while the animals given the mussels they would  normally eat did come down with the sickness. However, the sample size of the study was to small to derive any hard conclusions from.

Sea stars are known as an 'apex predator' in the intertidal zone, surviving on mussels and other shellfish.

'Losing a predator like that is bound to have some pretty serious ecological consequences and we really don't know exactly how the system is going to look,' says Harvell 'but we're quite certain that it's going to have an impact.'

Currently, scientists hope that young sea stars develop a resistance to the disease, allowing them to live full lives and for the population to recover from their losses.