A deadly epidemic, spreading from the Red Seahas killed off an entire species of sea urchin in the Gulf of Aqaba, endangering the area’s coral reefs, an Israeli research team has found.

The entire population of black sea urchins, a species known to keep coral reefs healthy in the waters also known as the Gulf of Eilat, was wiped out within two months, according to a team at Tel Aviv University.

The researchers’ findings, published in two peer-reviewed journals, cite mass mortality in other countries in the region, including Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The likely culprit is a parasite that causes a disease that brings about a rapid death – perhaps the same one that decimated sea urchin populations in the Caribbean.

Within just two days, a healthy Diadema setosum—a black sea urchin with long spines—becomes a skeleton, showing massive tissue loss, says lead researcher Omri Bronstein of the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History and Tel Aviv University’s School of Zoology.

Some wash up dead on shore. Others eat the fish, thus accelerating the transmission of the disease.

The first signs of a problem appeared in the Mediterranean, where these sea urchins had invaded over the years, possibly via the Suez Canal, and had become established. Bronstein said months ago there were reports of sea urchin deaths in Greece and Turkey.

While this was less of a concern at first, since it was an invasive species in the area, the pathogen has now crossed back into the natural population of these urchins in the Red Sea.

“Right now there’s nothing that can be done to stop this,” says Bronstein.

But there is a “very narrow window of opportunity”, he added, to create an isolated population of the remaining sea urchins elsewhere in the hope that they will return later.

The researchers say a report has been submitted to Israeli environmental authorities and that emergency measures are being considered to protect the coral reefs.

Sea urchins play an important role in keeping coral reefs in balance by feeding on algae that would otherwise block the sun’s rays and suffocate the reefs.

“Corals have no hope in competing with algae. That’s why we need sea urchins,” says Bronstein. “Without that kind of thing, as we’ve seen—and this is not fantasy, we’ve seen it happen before our eyes—the future is not good.”