What is being done at present to understand the crown-of-thorns starfish phenomenon?
Since late 1985 the Federal Government has provided about $A2.5 million for a coordinated research program on the crown-of-thorns starfish. Both the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority also have contributed a large amount of support to this research. The present program involves much innovative research and is a large multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional effort. About 70 scientists from throughout Australia are collaborating in 58 different projects. Those which are management-related are being coordinated by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority while the mainly ecological projects (see Fig. 15) are being coordinated by the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
