Scientific breakthrough against the Crown of Thorns
Two scientists in Queensland found that the protein mixture triggered an acute allergic reaction and caused the crown-of-thorns starfish to break apart and die within as little as 24 hours.
The Great Barrier Reef has lost half of its coral cover in the past 27 years and the starfish have been blamed for more than 40 per cent of that loss. They can damage up to 90 per cent of a reef’s coral. Recent outbreaks have been reported in the Great Barrier Reef, as well as Guam, French Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, and the central Indian Ocean.
A female starfish can release more than 50 million eggs a year, although the survival rate is usually low.
Researchers at James Cook University in Queensland made the breakthrough after examining a bacterium that occurs naturally in the starfish.
In what has been described as a “Eureka moment,” one of the scientists, Dr. Jairo Rivera Posada, was conducting research on an island in the Barrier Reef and wondered whether a substance being used to culture the bacterium could boost it enough to damage the host.
He and his colleague, Prof. Morgan Pratchett, injected five starfish with the solution — made from carbonates and proteins extracted from animal tissues — and were “astonished” as the starfish began to fall apart.
“I was only hoping to impair their immune systems, so the fact that they died so quickly was a great surprise,” Posada said.
The researchers found the solution caused the bacterium to bloom and attack the starfish. Simultaneously, the starfish suffered an acute allergic reaction to the unfamiliar animal proteins.
Posada said the next step would be to show the protein was safe for other marine life.
However, it was unlikely to be ready to prevent the current outbreak.
“In the Philippines, they removed as many as 87,000 starfish from a single beach. This gives you an idea of the numbers we have to deal with.”