Rapid Growth

Sunflower star closeup portrait by SSL / Pat Webster

MOSS LANDING Calif., (April 29th, 2026) – That headline applies to Sunflower Star Laboratory (SSL), as well as our star babies. It's amazing how far we've come, and how much progress has been made, in a little over four years. Most of you know the story. Sunflower Star Laboratory spawned from Vince Christian's (the Star Father) idea to save our kelp forests by restoring sunflower stars to their historic range. His passion carried through to a group of community members who formed a nonprofit organization, and helped build the first lab in Vince's garage. Reuven Bank (remember that name) became the first board chair while Priscilla Martin stepped up as our first Treasurer.

There was so much to learn and so much to do. And there still is. We quickly outgrew Vince's garage, and secured our current space in Moss Landing. Relationships and collaborations were started and strengthened with a number of science and conservation-driven organizations. Our aquaculture systems continued to expand as the first cohort of sunflower stars, spawned on Valentine's Day 2024, outgrow their small containers and we work towards raising future generations of stars at the scale needed for successful reintroduction. As the apex predators of kelp forests and rocky reefs, sunflower stars have voracious appetites and so we've developed a full ecosystem from the algae to feed the larval stars, to the sea urchins to feed our growing juveniles and adults.

Juvenile sunflower stars growing at SSL by Pat Webster

As word spread, donations started to come in from individual donors and foundations. Our 2024 operating budget was $112,000. In 2025, our budget had grown to roughly $540,000, and for this year, we've already secured $1.13M in funding. 

Ashley Kidd, a founding board member, became our first staff member, now serving as conservation program lead. She was joined shortly thereafter by Andrew Kim, another founding board member, as lab manager. We'll soon be up to 6.5 FTE staff. Our lab and conservation staff grew with our stars and budget, but until last month, our board and volunteers did everything else including outreach, operations, fundraising, communications, accounting, and admin. On the board, we knew it was beyond time, and essential for the health and continued growth of SSL and to achieve our goals for sunflower star reintroduction, to hire our first executive director. 

Since our founding, several volunteers have gone above and beyond to keep everybody else focused and on track. In recent years, one board member took on a lot of the work as a volunteer that a paid executive director would do. He's also more than just an interested community volunteer, as he has his B.S. In Biology; Ecology and Evolution from the University of Maryland, served as a coastal resource manager for the U.S. Peace Corps Philippines, and spent the last decade of his career in the National Park Service, including most recently as lead interpretive park ranger at Channel Islands National Park, including running the underwater interactive broadcast Channel Islands Live. In short, he had the perfect blend of education, experience, and passion and was the ideal candidate to become our executive director. I'm thrilled to announce that Reuven Bank accepted the board's offer, and is now executive director of Sunflower Star Laboratory! 

Channel Islands live broadcast by NPS / Scott Gabara

While that is great news for Reuven and SSL, it left a big hole to fill for chair of our board of directors. That's where I come in. I joined the SSL board at the beginning of 2025. While I originally had aspirations to become a marine biologist, my career took a different turn into marketing, communications and management, including 15 years leading nonprofit organizations. In addition to chief staff roles, I've served on the boards of over a dozen nonprofits and been the chair of three. And while I haven't been at SSL from the start, kelp forests are my favorite diving habitat, and I'm passionate about our mission. So, when the rest of the board asked me to fill Reuven's fin pockets and become chair of the board, I did a giant stride into the role. My number one goal is to support Reuven, the board and SSL where I can, and stay out of the way the rest of the time (is that two goals?).

This year, our rapid growth continues as we expand lab facilities and capacity and continue the research to better understand how best to grow and reintroduce sunflower stars at scale. This includes more exciting field work with temporary outplanting with our partners this summer. We're also working on long term goals and developing a three-to-five-year road map (or nautical chart), including stable funding sources, to help us get there. 

Thank you for your interest and support of our not-so-little-anymore community nonprofit that is determined to save the kelp forests, one sunflower star at a time.