Blog 3 - Crown-of-Thorns Starfish

Successful progress against the Crown-of-Thorns Starfish (COTS)

The COTS is a coral-eating starfish, with the scientific name Acanthaster planci. During the 1960s and 1970s, the bulk of the hard coral cover of reefs in the central region of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) was reported as killed because of population outbreaks of millions of COTS. The GBR is a vast and spectacular ecosystem and one of the most complex and beautiful natural systems on Earth. The GBR is composed of a series of coral reefs, located adjacent to the Queensland coastline of Australia.

​The GBR is the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem, stretching 2300 kilometres and comprising almost 3000 individual reefs. It is a significant economic and recreational resource for regional communities and Australia as a whole, with an asset value of $A56 billion, and supporting 64,000 jobs annually (O'Mahony et al., 2017). Therefore, major changes to the condition of the GBR ecosystem have social and economic implications for regional communities (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, 2019b).

Enviro Win Blog 3 - Click here to View

These EnviroBlogs are part of a set of three EnviroBlogs describing the success of large-scale environmental actions - Dr John K Lee.

​Citation references, Paragraph and Section references are those contained in Dr John K Lee's PhD Thesis “Values and science in contemporary education: The study and impact of student orientation”. The Thesis document is available in the University of Newcastle repository, here: https://openresearch.newcastle.edu.au/articles/thesis/Values_and_science_in_contemporary_education_the_study_and_impact_of_student_orientation/28975331