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The global biodiversity crisis unfurling around us often re-quires that we have more complete information to predict how emerging threats will affect ecosystems. We must be able to derive mechanisms from events that we were not prepared to study before they happened. Biologists have learned from undesirable outcomes many times before; the tremendous impacts of species translocations to new localities through human activities are unfortunate—but informative—“experiments” from which we could gain new insights into changing organismal interactions and distributions (Sax et al., 2005. Species Invasions: Insights into Ecology, Evolution, and Biogeography). Similarly, major disruptions to ecosystems have been a source of new understanding when experiments of similar magnitude are not possible, such as new models for community assembly following the massive volcanic eruption that wiped the Krakatau Islands clean of life (MacArthur and Wilson,1963. Evolution 17: 373–387). Although our scientific community can gather more precise and more comprehensive data, collectively glean more insights (e.g., Hewson et al., 2018.Front. Mar. Sci. 5: 77; Wares and Duffin, 2019. bioRxiv:10.1101/584235v1), and continue to reevaluate what we have seen and will see in the years to come, what will such effort achieve? We already have enough evidence that—whether sea stars died as a result of heat, dysoxia, and/or pathogen(s)or some additional combination—this event was the most extreme on record and an illustration of a decline in resilience (e.g., Menge et al., 2021. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.119: e2114257119). To avoid another decade of death, it is time to focus on pathways toward recovery of threatened species (Hamilton et al., 2021. Proc. R. Soc. B 288: 20211195)and ecosystem feedback loops (Aquino et al., 2021. Front.Microbiol. 11: 3278) that can rebalance how and where sea stars can thrive, remembering that these animals are typi-cally important consumers that drive diversity in marine ecosystems (Fig. 1F). One way or another, this massive SSW “experiment” is a component of a global problem thatwe must urgently resolve how to address.