Country intro
Crown-of-Thorns Starfish
We saw one of these while snorkeling in Malaysia and was amazed to finally encounter such an infamous creature in the flesh. You see, in the 1970's, when I was a young boy, there had been constant reports and films about how these starfish were destroying the Great Barrier Reef. And then after a few years, nothing, you never heard anything more about it. A lesson in the unpredictability of nature and our attempts to understand it. Who could have imagined that almost 50 years later the Great Barrier Reef would be in true danger from oceanic warming.
The crown-of-thorns starfish, ''Acanthaster planci'', is a large, multiple-armed starfish that usually preys upon hard, or stony, coral polyps . The crown-of-thorns starfish receives its name from venomous thorn-like spines that cover its upper surface, resembling the biblical crown of thorns. It is one of the largest starfish in the world.
