Vinegar May Save the Great Barrier Reef from Coral-Munching Starfish

Scientists have recently discovered that the solution to the invasive species known as crown of thorns starfish that preys on the corals of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, is apparently a common condiment seen in the kitchen, vinegar.

Currently, teams of divers are working to eradicate the invading starfish by injecting the creatures, one at a time, with ox-bile – a solution that’s costly and inconvenient. Besides being more expensive, ox bile cannot be bought off the shelves of any local store like vinegar can. However, with the success of the vinegar experiment, scientists still say that preventing the CoTS outbreak will not help to save coral reefs alone. The Crown of Thorns Starfish (CoTS) are breeding at epidemic levels and are one of the primary reasons for the decline in live coral. Aside from the rarity of this substance, it is also expensive, necessitates permits and should be at a certain concentration.

The CoTS in the JCU trial were all dead within 48 hours of being injected.

“There’s no reason to think it won’t work or it’ll be unsafe, but we have to be sure”, she said.

She said the findings could have big implications for developing countries without the means to acquire and use the current drug. A state-of-the-art robot equipped with stereoscopic cameras, thrusters, GPS, pitch-and-roll sensors and a unique pneumatic injection arm to deliver a fatal dose of bile salts, COTSbot is a promise that can deliver and provide safety to the corals of the Great Barrier Reef.

In a newly published study, however, Bostrom-Einarsson and her colleagues reveal that household vinegar is a much simpler and cheaper way to effectively control the starfish population.

In 2014, authorities were able to kill approximately 350,000 CoTS using two complete boat crews, said Boström-Einarsson. “While it would take an insane effort to cull them all that way, we know that sustained efforts can save individual reefs”, Ms Bostrom-Einarsson said. And a team of researchers at Queensland University of Technology has even developed an automated Terminator-like underwater robot, that swims around injecting any CoTS on sight.

To test whether this method may pose a threat to other marine life species, the researchers fed the dead CoTS to the fish in laboratory trials and did not result in any ill effects. “There is acid in the vinegar and because the starfish is made mostly of water, it can not regulate the pH and its tissue just melts away”.

However, now a new method of clearing up the starfish has been discovered by James Cook University scientists.