Ocean Sentry
(From environment.newscientist.com) – If you want to save coral reefs from rapacious starfish, you should ban fishing. The predator is less devastating in “no-take zones” of Australia”s Great Barrier Reef, however, where fishing has been banned since 1989.
A team led by Hugh Sweatman suspects that while the protected fish are unlikely to prey on the starfish directly, they may be eating more of the smaller fish that usually prey on small marine invertebrates, which in turn eat more of the juvenile starfish.
