IF YOU want to save coral reefs from rapacious starfish, you should ban fishing.
The crown-of-thorns starfish, Acanthaster planci, preys on corals in some of the most biodiverse and threatened reefs in the world, dwarfing coral losses from storms and bleaching. The predator is less devastating in “no-take zones” of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, however, where fishing has been banned since 1989 (Current Biology, vol 18, p R598).
A team led by Hugh Sweatman of the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville, Queensland, found that, between 1994 and 2004, there were only about a quarter as many starfish…
