Starfish eating Australia's Great Barrier Reef alarm scientists

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Starfish eating Australia's Great Barrier Reef alarm scientists

 

Tourists snorkel in an area called the 'Coral Gardens' at Lady Elliot Island, located north-east from the town of Bundaberg in Queensland, Australia, June 11, 2015. Picture taken June 11, 2015. REUTERS/David Gray

 

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A major outbreak of coral-eating crown of thorns starfish has been found munching Australia's world heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, scientists said on Friday, prompting the government to begin culling the spiky marine animals.

 

The predator starfish feeds on corals by spreading its stomach over them and using digestive enzymes to liquefy tissue, and the outbreak hits as the reef is still reeling from two consecutive years of major coral bleaching.

 

"Each starfish eats about its body diameter a night, and so over time that mounts up very significantly," Hugh Sweatman, a senior research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio.

 

"A lot of coral will be lost," he said.

 

That would mean a blow for both the ecosystem and the lucrative tourism industry which it supports.

 

The crown of thorns were found in plague proportions last month in the Swains Reefs, at the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef, by researchers from the reef's Marine Park Authority, a spokeswoman for the authority told Reuters by phone.

 

The remote reefs, about 200km (120 miles) offshore from Yeppoon, a holiday and fishing town some 500km north of Queensland state capital, Brisbane, are well south of the most-visited sections of the Great Barrier Reef, where most culling efforts are focused.

 

But the government's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority already killed some starfish at Swains Reefs in December and will mount another mission this month, a director at the authority, Fred Nucifora, told the ABC.

 

"The complexity with the Swains Reef location is ... they are logistically difficult to access and it is actually quite a hostile environment to work in," Nucifora said.

 

There have been four major crown of thorns outbreaks since the 1960s in the Great Barrier Reef but it recovered each time because there were always healthy populations of herbivorous fish. The outbreaks are usually triggered by extra nutrients in the water but the reason for the current outbreak was unclear, Sweatman said.

 

The reef is still recovering from damage wrought by the worst-ever coral bleaching on record, which in 2016 killed two-thirds of a 700km stretch of reef.

 

On Friday a report published in the journal Science found that high ocean temperatures are harming tropical corals much more often than a generation ago, putting reefs under pressure.

 

The Great Barrier Reef, covering 348,000 square kilometres, was world heritage listed in 1981 as the most extensive and spectacular coral reef ecosystem on the planet, according to the UNESCO website.

 

(Reporting by Tom Westbrook, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-01-05

[SheungWan]

Starfish have been an ongoing problem in Pattaya for years. Just look at the state of the beach.

[SABloke]

"That would mean a blow for both the ecosystem and the lucrative tourism industry which it supports."

 

More like killing animals naturally part of said ecosystem to protect the lucrative tourism industry. 

Edited January 5, 2018 by SABloke

[johnmcc6]

I lived on the coast along the G B R for 37 years. Both star fish and coral bleaching is a regular occurrence. The reef is in good shape in spite of what some greens have to say about it. It is alive and it heals. Google Bikini atoll to show how the reef there rebuilt itself after being obliterated by atom bombs. The biggest threat to the reef is from runoff from land clearing and pesticides used in agriculture. Many new regulations are in place with more on the way to address this threat. The government has divided the reef into sections making some off limits to fishing or visitation to allow regrowth. It is very well managed and in spite of the doomsayers it is doing just fine. There is a tourist tax on each visitor to the reef bringing in millions each year all going to research and conservation.

Edited January 5, 2018 by johnmcc6
more info

[boomerangutang]

6 minutes ago, johnmcc6 said:

I lived on the coast along the G B R for 37 years. Both star fish and coral bleaching is a regular occurrence. The reef is in good shape in spite of what some greens have to say about it. It is alive and it heals. Google Bikini atoll to show how the reef there rebuilt itself after being obliterated by atom bombs. The biggest threat to the reef is from runoff from land clearing and pesticides used in agriculture. Many new regulations are in place with more on the way to address this threat. The government has divided the reef into sections making some off limits to fishing or visitation to allow regrowth. It is very well managed and in spite of the doomsayers it is doing just fine. There is a tourist tax on each visitor to the reef bringing in millions each year all going to research and conservation.

I was about to 'like' your post, but the following sentence gave me pause;

" It is very well managed and in spite of the doomsayers it is doing just fine."

 

It might be well-managed as far as the little bit humans can do, but it sounds like it's far from 'doing fine.'  How long has it been since you resided near there?

[Sir Dude]

Ahhh...that type of starfish.

[ilostmypassword]

3 hours ago, johnmcc6 said:

I lived on the coast along the G B R for 37 years. Both star fish and coral bleaching is a regular occurrence. The reef is in good shape in spite of what some greens have to say about it. It is alive and it heals. Google Bikini atoll to show how the reef there rebuilt itself after being obliterated by atom bombs. The biggest threat to the reef is from runoff from land clearing and pesticides used in agriculture. Many new regulations are in place with more on the way to address this threat. The government has divided the reef into sections making some off limits to fishing or visitation to allow regrowth. It is very well managed and in spite of the doomsayers it is doing just fine. There is a tourist tax on each visitor to the reef bringing in millions each year all going to research and conservation.

You're entitled to your own opinions. But not to your own facts.

Global Warming’s Toll on Coral Reefs: As if They’re ‘Ravaged by War’

"Large-scale coral bleaching events, in which reefs become extremely fragile, were virtually unheard-of before the 1980s. But in the years since, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science, the frequency of coral bleaching has increased to the point that reefs no longer have sufficient recovery time between severe episodes...

While many mass bleachings were prompted by El Niño events, which tends to warm Pacific Ocean temperatures, the bleaching event that hit the Great Barrier Reef in 2017 — the reef’s first back-to-back bleaching — occurred at the beginning of a La Niña event, when ocean waters should have been cooler. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/climate/coral-reefs-bleaching.html

 

Edited January 5, 2018 by ilostmypassword

[thaibeachlovers]

11 hours ago, SABloke said:

"That would mean a blow for both the ecosystem and the lucrative tourism industry which it supports."

 

More like killing animals naturally part of said ecosystem to protect the lucrative tourism industry. 

Not so. The damage wrought by the starfish can't be underestimated, and they must be culled. Tourism is just incidental to this.

Before anyone claims it's caused by GW/ CC without proof, note that it's happened several times before.

[stevenl]

12 hours ago, SABloke said:

"That would mean a blow for both the ecosystem and the lucrative tourism industry which it supports."

 

More like killing animals naturally part of said ecosystem to protect the lucrative tourism industry. 

Problem is humanity has interfered, e.g. by chasing/ catching/killing by props turtles, the natural predator to this, very beautiful btw, starfish.

[maximillian]

1 hour ago, stevenl said:

Problem is humanity has interfered, e.g. by chasing/ catching/killing by props turtles, the natural predator to this, very beautiful btw, starfish.

Right. Humans and their motorboats and decimating turtles...

But "Crown of Thornes" starfish aren't beautiful.

Once an owner of a dive base in the Philippines, I killed hundreds of them, and I still shiver when I think of the smell of these creatures, when we took them out of the water and burried them deep in the sand. Beautyful ?  No, really.

[tryasimight]

The funding budget for the scientists must be running low. Let's bring this subject up again and get more funding.

BTW the biggest impact to the reef over the years has been massive amounts of fresh water and silt flowing from the mainland after cyclones, and has been that way for centuries.

The vast majority of the Great Barrier Reef would have seen very few humans ever visit. Its very, very big and showing some small parts that have a lot of tourists is very deceiving - but gets the most attention.

[ilostmypassword]

1 hour ago, tryasimight said:

The funding budget for the scientists must be running low. Let's bring this subject up again and get more funding.

BTW the biggest impact to the reef over the years has been massive amounts of fresh water and silt flowing from the mainland after cyclones, and has been that way for centuries.

The vast majority of the Great Barrier Reef would have seen very few humans ever visit. Its very, very big and showing some small parts that have a lot of tourists is very deceiving - but gets the most attention.

False.

Tropical reef systems are transitioning to a new era in which the interval between recurrent bouts of coral bleaching is too short for a full recovery of mature assemblages.. The median return time between pairs of severe bleaching events has diminished steadily since 1980 and is now only 6 years. As global warming has progressed, tropical sea surface temperatures are warmer now during current La Niña conditions than they were during El Niño events three decades ago.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6371/80

 

"While many mass bleachings were prompted by El Niño events, which tends to warm Pacific Ocean temperatures, the bleaching event that hit the Great Barrier Reef in 2017 — the reef’s first back-to-back bleaching — occurred at the beginning of a La Niña event, when ocean waters should have been cooler." 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/climate/coral-reefs-bleaching.html

[JHolmesJr]

Death to all starfish! They've got some nerve.

Edited January 6, 2018 by JHolmesJr

[stevenl]

13 hours ago, maximillian said:

Right. Humans and their motorboats and decimating turtles...

But "Crown of Thornes" starfish aren't beautiful.

Once an owner of a dive base in the Philippines, I killed hundreds of them, and I still shiver when I think of the smell of these creatures, when we took them out of the water and burried them deep in the sand. Beautyful ?  No, really.

Just like you I don't like them, but they still are beautiful.

[ilostmypassword]

18 minutes ago, JHolmesJr said:

Death to all starfish! They've got some nerve.

Some nerve but no brain.

"Starfish are unusual among animals for a variety of reasons. One important reason is their radial symmetry — they don't have a "front" or "back" end. Probably for this reason, they haven't concentrated the tissues of their nervous system into any kind of central body — that is, they have no brain."

http://www.madreporite.com/science/nervous.htm