Starfish

Starfish in Barry Seaman’s recollection are living creatures caught between the sea and the shore, and the focus of Marius Newell’s sustained, practical care. Their story moves from Newell’s habit of returning living specimens to the ocean to an unsuccessful effort to keep one in a tank, where it dies despite his attention.

Beach Encounters

Seaman says that whenever Newell walked along a beach in California, he came upon a starfish. Most starfish found on shore were dead, washed up by the waves, though some were still alive. Newell could tell the difference, although Seaman admits he does not know how. He left the dead where they were and returned living starfish to the sea, tossing them near the rocks to give them a chance.

That distinction governs the episode: the starfish are not merely beach objects but creatures whose condition Newell tries to recognize. His response to the living is modest and specific—not to keep them, but to return them to a place where they might survive.

The Tank and the Pump

Once, however, Newell took a starfish home and put it in a tank filled with Pacific brine. The episode falls in the early days of the Panthers, when Seaman and his comrades spent time directing traffic in their community to keep cars from speeding through and killing children. The city did not provide the stoplights they considered useful, while Newell attended to the starfish he had brought home.

Newell soon realized that the tank needed a pump. One night, he went with Seaman and little Nelson Sanchez to steal one from a rare-fish shop in Colchester Sun, a white neighborhood. None of the three was armed. They entered through the back door, but as Newell took the pump, a man appeared with a shotgun.

The group backed away as the armed man advanced, eventually reaching the car Nelson was driving. When the man raised his shotgun to aim, Seaman urged Nelson to speed away. Newell instead told him to go slowly; only after the car had rolled toward the main street did Newell say it was time to accelerate. The man remained behind as the car pulled away. The pump did not save the starfish: a week or two later, despite the care Newell had lavished on it, the animal died and ended up in the trash.

Life, Death, and Seaman’s Metaphor

Seaman places the starfish recollection within a discussion of stars and metaphors. The starfish on the beach echo the passage’s larger distinction between what is alive and what is dead, while Newell’s ability to tell them apart remains unexplained. His effort to keep one alive ends in failure, contrasting his earlier practice of returning living starfish to the sea, where they had a chance.

The episode also gives Seaman’s abstract reflections a concrete counterweight: care does not guarantee survival, and trying to preserve a living thing can require action whose outcome is uncertain. The starfish’s death closes the anecdote without resolving the mystery of how Newell recognized which ones were alive. Its brief movement from shore to tank to trash remains distinct from the figurative stars Seaman discusses, but makes the boundary between life and death tangible.