Word: starfish
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...irretrieyably disturbed. Little mini-eco-catastrophes have been happening ever since man arrived on the scene. In the South, Pacific collectors, naturalists, and trumpeters on hundreds of islands have been picking up tritons off the coral reefs and beaches to get their conch shells. The tritons cat the starfish which prey on the coral animals that build up the reefs. Because there are now so many people on the earth, they are now picking up enough tritons so that the coral reefs are crumbling. And after a while most of those islands and parts of Australia are going...
...creatures are more aptly named. The crown-of-thorns, a large, reddish brown sea dweller, has as many as 21 arms, all covered with venomous spines that can temporarily paralyze a swimmer and provoke fits of vomiting. Known to biologists as Acanthaster planci, this sinister-looking, 2-ft.-wide starfish is an even greater menace to some of its tiny aquatic neighbors. It likes nothing better than to feed on the living coral reefs where it makes its home...
...decade ago. Since then it has laid waste to 100 sq. mi. of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest and most impressive collection of underwater coral formations. It has also destroyed nearly 22 miles of Guam's coral barrier. Marine biologists report similar starfish damage off Saipan, Fiji and the western Solomons. In only five years, says Oceanographer R. D. Gaul of San Diego's Westinghouse Ocean Research Laboratory, the starfish can destroy a coral atoll that may have taken thousands of years to form...
...thorns, some scientists suggest repopulating the reefs with tritons, which are now protected by law in Queensland, Australia. Others propose spreading lime on the ocean floor, a technique that has already been used with moderate success to protect Long Island Sound's oyster beds from the common American starfish, Asterias forbesi. A Japanese scientist has even advised stringing wire around coral reefs to repel the starfish with a low-voltage electric shock...
...divers from San Diego's Westinghouse Lab who fanned out across the Pacific this summer in an expedition sponsored by the U.S. Government. Unless the crown-of-thorns is restrained, many more miles of coral in the Pacific and other seas will be ravaged by the spreading starfish...