My collection of Crown of Thorn Starfish.

[Rogersea]

Crown of Thorn Starfish collected Thursday.

Last weekend while scouting for new mooring sites for our boat, we noticed that some Crown of Thorn Starfish(COTS) had started to show up in the area. So this morning while my Boat Captain (Mario) and Dive Master (Chris) were working on our new mooring, I decided to spend a little while collecting COTS. Take a look at my collection:



It took a little less than 2 hours to collect the 31 COTS shown in the picture. I left my Aqua Mondo Jet fin in the picture for scale.

I am thinking about asking a couple of local fishermen to collect them for about a week and pay them a reasonable per head (yet to be determined) fee.

Cheers,
Roger

 

[h2odragon1]

You keep doing this, they'll go extinct in your area.
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

 

[TSandM]

It's amazing the amount of damage each of them can do to a reef. Have you guys had problems with people collecting the helmet shells that prey on them?

 

[Rogersea]

You keep doing this, they'll go extinct in your area.
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

I would settle for them to show up on WWF's endangered species list!

 

[Rogersea]

It's amazing the amount of damage each of them can do to a reef. Have you guys had problems with people collecting the helmet shells that prey on them?

Most of the Gastropods which were suspected of being major predators of these guys are long gone in this area, and are sitting on someones Mantle, or in someones attic! "I" think divers are the only real defense against these guys now.

Cheers,
Roger

Update I went for another quick(40 minutes) snorkel this afternoon, and collected another 11 These, I left in a bag under my boat maybe, I will take them and dump em a mile out in 400 meters.

 

[eagerbeaver]

Does that work for sure? Letting them sink deep? We've been considering it.

 

[Rogersea]

I think that shoving some semi rigid bio degradable object such as the center of a palm frond or hemp twine through its anus(eye) and hooking several together will keep them from surviving.

The other idea I have is to leave them in the rice sack and place a plastic garbage bag around that for about a week until they suffocate and then dump them. seems like a lot of work, but the alternative of burying them on land does not work everywhere...

Cheers

 

[eagerbeaver]

Thanks Roger, questions -
Doesnt any threat of death cause them to spawn, hence spreading the problem if you impale them before removing from the water?
Whats the problem with burying them other than the work and possible smell?
We had considered letting them die and them dumping them back in but can we be certain no eggs are released?

Cheers,

Matt.

 

[Tigerman]

Wow, thats a lot of fairly small cots...

As to destroying them, you could always bring them home and burn them?

 

[Rogersea]

I am pretty sure the spontaneous spawning is urban/diving legend, Perhaps it happened once but I am pretty sure it was an anomoly. Yes, letting them die ashore and then dumping them at sea is a good way, in fact I did that with the first 31.

Where I live there is really no place to bury them, as there is a paucity of sand and arable land.

Last year I brought about 100 home and burned them(never again The smell of them drying out caused massive neighbor complaints and then the wafting smoke offended many many more, it smelled like bad dried fish.

Cheers,
Roger