The government is to establish a task force to address an explosion of crown-of-thorns starfish threatening corals around Dongsha Atoll National Park, the Ministry of the Interior said on Sunday.
In addition to support from the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ocean Affairs Council, the cross-agency team would also include experts from Academia Sinica, the Taiwanese Coral Reef Society and National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU), along with professional divers to reduce the starfish population near the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島), Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said.
The task force would be sent to the national park in 10 deployments to clear out the starfish, with each deployment lasting a week, Liu said.
Photo copied by Ge You-hao, Taipei Times
After an official call to recruit expert divers was sent out on July 10, the Marine National Park Headquarters received responses from 436 applicants in 11 days, the organization said.
The official roster released on July 30 showed that the headquarters recruited 102 divers as volunteers.
The task force would also include 39 experts from Academia Sinica’s Biodiversity Research Center, the NSYSU’s Dongsha Atoll Research Station and non-governmental organizations, the headquarters said.
The task force adopted as its mascot Charonia tritonis, a species of large sea snail commonly known as “Triton’s trumpet,” which is the natural enemy of the crown-of-thorns starfish, the organization said.
Adult crown-of-thorns starfish, which feed on coral polyps as part of the natural food chain, are not a threat to corals when the ecosystem is balanced, it said.
However, overconsumption of polyps by a high number of crown-of-thorns starfish could result in the collapse of the coral ecosystem, which Dongsha Atoll National Park is experiencing, likely due to a combination of factors including changes in climate, pollution and a decrease in the starfish’s natural predators, it said.
Based on the Marine National Park Headquarters’ monitoring of the starfish population in the past few years, and with the help of Academia Sinica, it confirmed in June that the overpopulation was so severe that 20 to 30 starfish could be spotted every 100m2 in the waters in the national park, it said.
Taiwan is not the only country dealing with an overpopulation of crown-of-thorns starfish, the Ministry of the Interior said.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and Japan’s Okinawa, as well as nations in the South China Sea, have also been affected by the overpopulation of the starfish, it said.
While experts and academics attempt to pinpoint the main reason for the starfish’s rapid population growth, manual removal is the most effective way to control the population, it said.
The Dongsha Atoll National Park, in the northern part of the South China Sea, is about 400km from Taiwan proper.
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