Attack

[MoonWrasse]

You need more trigger fish. That'll fix the problem.

 

[archman]

And trumpet shells. They also eat Acanthaster. Unfortunately, shell harvesting for the tourists has sapped the trumpet shells down to near zero.

Injecting starfish with needles is dangerous and time consuming. It's a last ditch effort that doesn't tend to do anything more than stave off the inevitable.

 

[Hank49]

And trumpet shells. They also eat Acanthaster. Unfortunately, shell harvesting for the tourists has sapped the trumpet shells down to near zero.

Injecting starfish with needles is dangerous and time consuming. It's a last ditch effort that doesn't tend to do anything more than stave off the inevitable.

Two threads were spun off this. Anyway, I had experience with C of Ts in the Philippines in 1999 following the big El Nino of 98. The coral had bleached and soon after a wave of them moved across the reef in front of the west beach of Boracay consuming any coral that was left. As Archman stated, injecting had little effect. All of us working in dive shops started injecting chlorine but you actually had to inject every appendage at the base to kill them because there was a reproductive organ in all 12, or so, arms and they would still be alive after three days or so when the rest of the animal was just rotted flesh. We ended up just gathering them into bags and disposing of them but by that time the reef was gone. They did stop however at the north and south ends of the island where the reef hadn't bleached, We surmised due to cooler water moving through with the tide changes that the coral remained healthy. This also seemed to indicate that a healthy reef has natural defenses, perhaps enzymes secreted by some coral species, that inhibit unrestricted movement and reproduction by the C of Ts as well as predators of their larvae.
And I got poked twice. Once on the ankle bone which was no problem, and once in the tip of my thumb, which hurt for three months.

 

[paolov]

Hank49,

i guess its best we continue the thread here.

 

[archman]

And I got poked twice. Once on the ankle bone which was no problem, and once in the tip of my thumb, which hurt for three months.

Acanthaster venom is hemolytic, a blood toxin. Causes swelling and pain, in rats it's been shown to increase heart rate and dilate blood vessels. I don't think there's an antivenom... all the literature I've read says that the pain can be very long-duration.

I'm SO glad we don't have these things in the Caribbean.

 

[Matthew]

paolov,

Just the other weekend we found that the reef behind Divers Sanctuary (formerly El Capitan) has been infested by thousands of COTs. It was such a sorry sight as the corals in the area have been completely covered. The resort will be sponsoring a weekend for gathering and destroying them, but I wonder how effective it will be because of the sheer numbers of the pests. I can only hope they dont spread to the other nearby sites.

 

[Mako Mark]

we used to collect them in Menjangan in Bali. you need two sticks about two feet long and about ten feet of string between them.

You spike the starfish with a stick and thread it onto the string. This way you can get a couple of dozen of them per dive. the only real way to kill them its take them out of the water.

Basically with all the local DM's doing this a couple of times a week, the population was controlled

 

[Hank49]

we used to collect them in Menjangan in Bali. you need two sticks about two feet long and about ten feet of string between them.

You spike the starfish with a stick and thread it onto the string. This way you can get a couple of dozen of them per dive. the only real way to kill them its take them out of the water.

Basically with all the local DM's doing this a couple of times a week, the population was controlled

Yeah, we poked them with a bamboo stick and put them into woven, plastic fertilizer bags.
The injection technique put a whole new meaning to good buoyancy contol. Try hovering over a starfish on a reef and inject him 12 times without touching bottom or getting poked. Hank