A harvest of Crown of Thorns

Lina Sagaral Reyes

Balingoan, Misamis Oriental

WITH a skewerful of ''dap-ag'' in his

hand, computer software specialist

Derek Day surfaces after 74 minutes

from the coral reefs in a marine

sanctuary off Sipaka Point in Misamis Oriental.

''Who says a working dive is

not fun?'' the visiting

Englishman says as he hands

in his spiky harvest, places

back the apparatus that

connects his mouth to an

oxygen tank and, in a minute,

the man-fish is back

underwater.

Next emerges broadcast

journalist Mylene Pabayo with a much bigger catch of thorny

dap-ag. These she handily and deftly delivers up to the

boatman who, in turn, places them on the floor, careful not to

get stung by the starfish's thousands of spikes or risk a long

night of fever and chills.

Jojo Lim, Ernie Roleda and Dennis Makun bob up from the

14-meter depths with their own catch, wishing out loud that

their harvests were edible or were fish ready to be broiled to

assuage their growing hunger.

Day, Pabayo, Lim, Roleda and Makun are five of the many

weekend volunteers who have responded to ''Project Reef

Relief.'' The project is aimed at helping find relief for the coral

reefs which had been hit by the marauding Crown of Thorns

starfish (Acanthaster planci).

Outbreaks of these predators, locally known as ''dap-ag,'' are

known to wipe out coral reefs in the Okinawa Islands in 1969

and 1977 and in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly in the West

Samoa and Vanuatu in the past three decades.

''Under natural conditions, these creatures are really part of the

coral reef ecosystem, but too much of them would threaten the

sustainability of the reef,'' Roel Uy, diver and manager of the

Mantangale Alibuag Resort, explained to the volunteers before

they set off to dive.

Normally, these spiky, many-spoked echinoderms nibble on the

fast-growing branching corals, he said.

Never a lost cause

Uy patrols the waters often and has been sensitive to changes

in the reef. ''But I noticed they were multiplying about two

months ago.''

He said he was alarmed when he saw some of them already

feasting on the bigger but slow-growing boulder and brain

corals.

The Crown of Thorns are the armyworms of the depths. But

while the latter could devastate a large swath of farmlands, the

Crown of Thorns can multiply so fast and eat an entire reef

before the next tide comes in.

Uy called on volunteers to come and help him get some of them

out. ''We are not going to eliminate them. We are just trying to

thin out its population,'' he stressed.

That many came to heed his call shows the man is not a lonely

prophet and the reef is never a lost cause.

Volunteers

A day earlier, 24 divers, mostly from the Task Force Barracuda, a

community environmental monitoring group, and executives

from a food processing company in Cagayan de Oro City,

responded to Uy's appeal.

Government agencies, notably the Department of Tourism, were

very supportive. The resort provided volunteers free

all-you-can eat ''workingman's lunch'' and use of its diving

facilities in exchange for what Day called ''a working dive.''

Uy hopes to cover the entire stretch of the cove close to the

resort that his family owns, west from Lapinid Island to Sipaca

Point in the east. They would scour the reef within two marine

sanctuaries established by the community.

Before the sun reached its zenith, the group of seven must have

gathered over 200 acanthasters. As this group would take its

lunchbreak, another group prepared to take the dive farther east.

''I hope we have acted early enough and contained this

outbreak. They can wipe out entire reefs,'' Uy said.

He explained that the sustainability of his kind of business

depends largely on the reef's sustainability.

This might be the first time Uy spearheaded the call to take out

the Crown of Thorns starfish, but there had been at least five

other coastal cleanups, which involved both the community of

fishers and diving enthusiasts, in this area the past four years.

''This is also one activity that has educational value. You make

the divers understand how they can be responsible for the

health of the reefs. This way they can be assured they can come

back here and sustain the (diving as) sport,'' he said.

Cause unknown

Scientists are studying the phenomenon of these outbreaks in

the Pacific region but have not yet pointed out its causes.

They are deemed one of the most complex and controversial

issues in marine research since it cannot as yet be ascertained

whether these are natural occurrences or are caused by human

impact.

Most often, these predators are rare in a reef but their

population can suddenly explode into millions. Prof. Leon Zann

who had studied the devastating Crown of Thorns phenomenon

in the Indo-Pacific region, thinks the occurrence impact is

greater in areas already ravaged by human activities.

The outbreaks in that area occurred three times in 35 years.

Zann says the outbreak is ''exacerbated by land-based human

activities'' like pollution.

He adds that he finds a correlation between the occurrence of

the El Ni?o Southern Oscillation phenomenon and the timing of

the outbreaks. An Enso, characterized by a long dry spell and

the warming of the ocean waters of the Southern Pacific, was

recorded during the second half of 1997 up to the first half of

1998.

In the Kyoto and Ryukyu Islands in Japan, scientists are

studying the migration and distribution of these starfish, writes

Kiyoshi Yamamoto. Mirror-clear waters

Uy sees no other alternative to a manual harvest by divers

because none of its predators, like the giant triton shellfish, the

puffer and shrimp, are known to affect its exploding population

density. He also ruled out using chemicals.

Despite the outbreak, however, Uy's optimism is as high as the

noonday sun over the reef's mirror-clear waters. ''Mingaw gyud

kaayo dinhi sa una (These waters were desolate before). Illegal

fishing using dynamite was rampant. That was six years ago,'' he

said.