Crown Of Thorns Case Study

Ever since the 1960’s, The Crown of Thorns Starfish have been destroying our magnificent Great Barrier Reef. Biotic factors are a major consideration of the outbreak of the Crown of Thorns, lack of predators and their high fertilization rate plays a massive role in this overwhelming amount of starfish. The main predator the COT meets is the giant triton snail1. But because of recent population problems making the predators lacking in numbers they have no way of reducing the crown of thorns population. The fertilization rate for the starfish is higher than ever, each releasing 60 million eggs per year during mating season2. As long as a male is at least 20 metre away there is 70% chance of fertilization. The Abiotic factor included are, water
motion and human interaction. Things like agriculture runoffs increase the population by spreading farm nutrients into the reef, supplying the starfish with promising things like phytoplankton. The water motion can then carry the nutrients throughout the reef, the more the water moves the further it can be carried and taken to any Crown of Thorns Starfish.
Discussion –
In the past the Crown of Thorns never seemed like a threat to the reef, as the things we know now were not known. But since 1986 they seemed to suddenly have had a large outbreak at an overwhelming amount, especially in our Great Barrier Reef. Slowly people became trying to come up with ways to control this outbreak, but as the present was coming closer it seems that all that was happening was further fertilization rates for the COTS and the rapid disintegration of our Reef.

Nowadays people are trying a lot harder to stop the outbreak, but in some ways it seems it’s an impossible mission to be trying to accomplish. The more the starfish continues to reproduces the harder will get, as seen in the data above you can see that whilst there is minor decreasing in the outbreaks, the COTS still remains to be gathering it’s population and it’s outbreaks. Organisations have current programs which they are using to try and stop the outbreak and control the Crown of Thorns Starfish population. The Australian Government funds a COT management program3, whom of which inject poison into the starfish. One method is to inject poison into each of the starfishes’ arms, but because of the large amount of their arms – between 7 to 232 - over time they have seen a problem occurring. If the poison is not put into each of them the starfish will seem dead. But will soon enough, grow back it’s arm and continue to suck the nutrients out of the beloved coral. This occurred until researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies came up with a new single shot which has drastically changed the way we manage this underwater predator.
Whilst the present seems to be going slow for the hopeful full removal of COTS all throughout the Reef.
The present seems to be coming will many better solutions which are currently on their way. The main goal is to preserve the coral cover and learn as much as possible regarding the current outbreak we are currently experiencing. As well as creating and testing improved ways to find the COTS and get rid of this parasite. This may seem like an uplifting thought, that maybe somehow we can learn to control the Crown of Thorns and figure out one solution to mix the rapid occurring problem. But until then, we are left with what seems like no coral and no life for all the underwater species. Until we can fully understand just what is occurring to make this outbreak happen progress in the future remains hopeful but slow.
Overall I think that in the future the Great Barrier Reef will become nothing, I believe that over time the population of the Crown of Thorns Starfish will overwhelm the reef to the point of no coral. The outbreak rate whilst does have some low points has continued to stay high. They may be creating new inventions, and studying the COTS a lot more but all of this takes time, and time is not something that we have at the rate that they are
reproducing.