July–August 2015 123FEEDBACK, R EADER PHOTOS, BOOK R EVIEWS & ASK AN EXPERT
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Highlights of events and
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COMPETITION
Win a BBC Human Universe DV D set,
featuring Professor Brian Cox.
Dusky rose
by Gary Holland
I was lucky enough to
capture this snap of a
waterbird at sunset at
Tuggerah Lakes, a
wetland system
of lagoons on the
Central Coast of NSW.
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THOR NY R ESIDENTS
It was with interest that I read your
article about the crown-of-thorns
starfish on the Montebello Islands,
and the threat they pose to Ningaloo
Reef (AG 126).
You may like to know that they have
already been there for some time. My
wife and I moved to Exmouth in 1973,
and in 1975 I developed the first dive
shop in town: Nielsen Diving, which
later became Exmouth Diving Centre.
In November 1985 I took some people
May–June 2015 37
DAMIAN THOMSON/CSIRO/
Acanthaster planci; acropora
sp.
MARINE BIOLOGY
Tparadise of 250 islands and islets and HE MONTEBELLO 120km west of the Pilbara’s Dampier Peninsula, are a Islands,
and fishes. Although these reefs – and more than 1000 reefs, which are home to hundreds of unique species of corals
the 260km-long Ningaloo Reef – are less famous than their east-coast counterparts, they are ne
spectacular and highly biodiverse. Whale sharks migrate here annually to vertheless
coincide with mass spawning of corals. CSIROThis is why scientists from the and the U
Australia were alarmed to find out-breaks of crown-of-thorns starfish niversity of Western
(surveyed 60km of reefs in the Montebello Islands in late 2014. These COTS) during a research voyage that eastern
starfish are voracious coral grazers, and
outbreaks have contributed to the Great Barrier Reef losing half its coral cover since 1985. In bad outbreaks,
individual reefs can lose 90 per cent of their cover. per hectare counts as an outbreak, but Any more than 10 starfish
the researchers found densities of up to 190 per hectare in their recent survey. Even more alarming is that these reefs
are just 200km away from Ningaloo itself – and with starfish able to each
produce up to 100 million eggs, it may soon be within reach. “COTS has never been recorded in
these high densities in says Damian Thomson, a marine WA previously,”
ecologist with the comes at a bad time for Pilbara reefs, as severe bleaching events over the last CSIRO. “This
3–5 years have reduced coral cover to about 6 per cent, an all-time low.” The initial goal for the scientists
was to find out how far outbreaks had spread and measure their severity, but they will now work COTS
with the control and mitigation measures. After British atomic weapons WA government to look into
testing in the Montebello Islands in the 1950s, radioactivity meant this area was deemed unsafe for many
marine park, now faces an all-new threat in the form of a spiky interloper years. The region, today protected as a
that has already wreaked havoc on the other side of the continent.
JOHN PICKRELL
Coral nemesis. Damian Thomson (left) examines a crown-of-thorns starfi sh from an outbreak at the CSIRO marine ecologist
Montebello Islands, 200km from Worldage-listed Ningaloo Reef. These invertebrates (below) are major predators of corals, such as Herit-
this large acropora at Sholl Island (bottom.)
Already disastrous for the Great Barrier Reef, crown-
of-thorns starfish now threaten Ningaloo too.
New threat to WA reefs
AGG_1505_1_496333.0 37
on a dive on the south-west corner of
North Muiron Island, north-east of
Exmouth and in about 8m of water
came across a crown-of-thorns
starfish. Later, in June 1986, I had a
charter dive in the same location,
9–12m deep, and we spotted five
more. The last time that I spotted a
crown-of-thorns starfish was on a
wrecked barge near the American Pier
at the tip of North West Cape in
November 1987. I hope this informa-
tion may be of interest to you and
CSIRO scientist Damian Thomson.
HENNING E. NIELSEN, MANDURAH, WA
SAVING THE PAR ROTS
I write to update your readers on
some western ground parrot conser-
vation developments. On 6 July 2014,
seven members of one of WA’s most
endangered species of birds were
moved to a secluded area of Perth
Zoo, in hopes of breeding and
releasing individuals back into the
wild. Pezoporus wallicus flaviventris is
currently only found in two national