BOLINAO, PANGASINAN – Corals are just starting to flourish here and in western Pangasinan towns, but spiny and toxic starfish that have invaded the marine protected areas are threatening to stop their growth.

The crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) are a plague of corals as they voraciously eat the polyps by spreading their stomach over the corals and using digestive enzymes to liquefy the tissues.

“The corals should have replenished but these have been consumed by starfish,” Jesem Gabatin, a fisherman here, said.

“The damage in the marine protected areas (MPAs) is quite bad,” said scientist Edgardo Gomez, who has been extensively working on coral reefs in the country since 1976.

He said some branching corals have been ravaged. “The crown-of-thorns starfish are a real threat to corals as they could decimate an entire reef area,” he said.

The starfish infestation was one of the issues discussed during a recent forum on coastal resources management.

Spines

This type of starfish has thorn-like spines sprouting all over its body. It grows to up to 40 cm (15.5 inches) and has 12 to 19 arms extending from the center. Its sting can inflict great pain on humans.

Gabatin said they first saw the thorny starfish in the MPAs sometime in 2006 and an outbreak occurred in April this year in Barangay Balingasay here.

Gabatin, president of the Samahan ng Kaisahan ng mga Samahan Alay sa Kalikasan, a federation of fishermen groups in this town, said they had to remove the coral-eaters manually, put them in tight crates to prevent larvae from escaping and then buried them.

He said it was difficult to remove the thorns because they hid in hollow areas in the coral reefs “so we wait until the starfish are out in the open before collecting and burying them.”

Alaminos Mayor Hernani Braganza said the thorny starfish are seen in the Hundred Islands National Park and in the city’s MPAs, but no outbreak has so far occurred.

“We do not know the extent of damage they inflicted on the corals,” he said.

Manual work

Like in the other towns, divers from Alaminos remove the starfish manually and bury them.

In island town of Anda, Mayor Nestor Pulido said a starfish scourge occurred last summer when hundreds of thousands of the species swarmed in the town’s marine sanctuaries.

“It is very difficult to remove them. You have to be careful because if you break them, they will multiply some more,” he said.

Jun Casana, leader of the fishery monitoring and enforcement group in the town, said the last time they cleaned up the sanctuaries was in June when the infestation was still widespread.

Gomez said crown-of-thorns starfish have also threatened reefs in Palawan and Mindoro.