Scientists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science warned in 2011 that the crown-of-thorns starfish was responsible for about 40 per cent of coral loss since the 1980s.
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Bostrom-Einarsson claims that so far this is the only eco-friendly solution they got, and even though manually injecting each and every crown-of-thorns starfish from the region is time-consuming, she believes that it is achievable.
Trials undertaken at the university found that all starfish given 20ml of vinegar died within 48 hours.
Researcher Lisa Boström-Einarsson said vinegar had been tried unsuccessfully before, but James Cook University scientists refined the process which resulted in a 100% kill rate.
“It’s expensive, requires permits and has to be mixed to the right concentration”, she said. On the other hand, the 99 CoTS from Great Barrier Reef were injected with a total of 25, 20, 15 or 1.5 ml vinegar in one, two or four sites, using a 19-gauge stainless steel needle.
A crown-of-thorns starfish munching on a coral. On a healthy reef, the species is actually vital to maintaining the delicate balance of the costal ecosystem by consuming fast growing coral, thereby promoting marine diversity; in fact, a single starfish can eat up to six square meters of reef in a single year.
“There’s no reason to think it won’t work or it’ll be unsafe, but we have to be sure”, she said in the statement released by JCU on Wednesday.
Bostrom-Einarsson added that the findings may help developing countries to stop using the current drug to eliminate the starfish. A state-of-the-art robot equipped with stereoscopic cameras, thrusters, GPS, pitch-and-roll sensors and a unique pneumatic injection arm to deliver a fatal dose of bile salts, COTSbot is a promise that can deliver and provide safety to the corals of the Great Barrier Reef. “[Scientists] managed to kill around 350,000 a year ago with two full-time boat crews”.
Though researchers are looking for ways to stem the population growth of CoTS, as of now one-by-one killing is the only option. Then hopefully someone will hook those starfish-killing robots up with some vinegar in their needles, because we’re pretty sure that would be unstoppable. “While it would take an insane effort to cull them all that way, we know that sustained efforts can save individual reefs”. Research needs to ensure that the vinegar does not harm other sea life. “There is acid in the vinegar and because the starfish is made mostly of water, it can not regulate the pH and its tissue just melts away”.
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It looks like a destructive starfish species has been wreaking havoc across Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
