Coral's Deadly Enemy
p. 39 · Read in the full issue
Fiji Fisheries Assistant Euka Ninokibau looks with justifiable dislike at the creature currently menacing coral reefs throughout the South Pacific.
It’s the Crown of Thoms starfish, almost indestructible and responsible for turning 100 square miles of the Australian Great Barrier Reef into an undersea desert.
Fiji’s fishermen and divers have been urged to destroy the starfish by burning—breaking them into pieces only results in each piece turning into another starfish.
The Crown of Thoms poses such a threat to the reefs of the Pacific that the US Government held a conference in Guam to discuss possible means of wiping it out.