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Outside Magazine November 2001

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Marine Life
Starfish Troopers
Naughty echinoderms are gobbling up the Great Barrier Reef. This is a job Aussies with spearguns.
By Dan Glick


	Wetsuit vigilantes (from left): Neville Walters, Daniel Hill, and Dean Kusnezow

TWO HOURS into his shift whacking some of the most colorful creatures to adorn Australia's Great Barrier Reef, Daniel Hill bobs to the surface with a five-quart jug of toxic sodium bisulfate solution strapped on his back. He's brandishing a two-foot-long injection gun that looks like it's straight out of the Orkin arsenal, and—unlike most exterminators—he sounds downright thrilled about his workplace conditions: "Not a bad office, is it, mate?"

Hill is an underwater pest-control specialist whose prey is the crown-of-thorns starfish, or COTS, a species that in many places is a benign aquatic ornament notable mainly for its oversupply of arms (18 on average) and vibrant orange and pink hues. But the COTS feeds on living coral, and here on the world's most famous tropical reef, it's become a major scourge—each voracious specimen can chew through coral at a rate of 65 square feet a year. In a healthy marine ecosystem, that's fine; COTS help keep coral growth in check. But in recent years, the Australian beasties have multiplied so fast that tens of thousands now carpet 65 percent of the middle section of the reef, a swath totaling 500 square miles.

Scientists can't seem to agree why. Some say the explosion is part of a natural cycle; others cite agricultural runoff, which serves as COTS Viagra; and others blame overfishing of natural predators like shrimp. But the result is indisputable: "It's the underwater equivalent of a bushfire," says Udo Engelhardt, director of Reef Care International, which monitors COTS outbreaks.

In response to this spiny menace, at least one outfitter in the $1-billion-a-year tour-ism industry is fighting back, by hiring Hill and his scuba divers at Coral Reef Care, a group of marine mercenaries who like to call themselves "starfish troopers." For $140 a day each, Hill's divers swim around a tourist pontoon owned by Cairns-based Great Adventures, jab their probes into any COTS they come across (as many as 150 a day), and pump them chock-full of poison. Now, thanks to a recent $512,000 government subsidy, scores of starfish troopers could descend on the reef. This sounds like an awfully unneighborly way to treat starfish, but as far as the dive outfitters are concerned, it's war out there.

"If we don't do more right now, COTS will wipe out a lot of good diving areas," says Col McKenzie, spokesman for the dive operators. "We're fighting a locust plague with a butterfly net."

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