There are estimated to be about four to 12 million crown of thorns starfish on the Great Barrier Reef. Photo: ARC Centre of Excellence Coral Reef Studies 
 
 An outbreak of coral-eating starfish on the Great Barrier Reef could become the worst on record, conservationists fear. 
 
 A report commissioned by WWF-Australia says the number of crown of thorns starfish could soar from between four and 12 million to 60 million by 2020. 
 
 "It would be like a locust plague devastating vegetation," Glen Holmes, co-author of The Starfish That Eat The Reef, said. 
 
 The devastating starfish are already believed to be responsible for the loss of around 60,000 hectares of live coral over the past 30 years. 
 
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 While there is nothing that can be done to halt the current outbreak, experts are appealing for tougher measures to prevent future plagues. 
 
 Harmful chemical fertilisers flowing off agricultural farming land and into the reef waters are fuelling the outbreaks by triggering algal blooms which feed the starfish. 
 
 "If we cut catchment pollution we can starve the baby crown of thorns starfish and prevent the next outbreak before it happens," Dr Holmes said. 
 
 "This will give the reef a chance to rebuild its coral cover and grow again." 
 
 Current state and national government investment has failed to achieve even modest targets and more money is needed to reduce pollution, he added. 
 
 If the outbreak follows the patterns of previous plagues then coral cover could be reduced to below 10 per cent, the report said. 
 
 AAP 
 
 Stay informed. Like the Brisbane Times Facebook page ||||| The Great Barrier Reef will be listed as a threatened ecosystem by the United Nations from June next year unless the government follows a series of recommendations to protect it, the World Heritage Committee has decided. 
 
 The committee, meeting in Cambodia, largely stood by a draft report it released in May, which noted "concern" at the "limited progress" in halting coastal development and other threats to the reef. 
 
 A separate committee concern over the "lack of clarity" around water quality was amended, after the federal government pledged $200m in the May budget for the continuation of its "reef rescue" program, which aims to reduce the amount of agricultural chemicals flowing into the reef. 
 
 The government has also produced, as the committee requested, an updated "scorecard" on the reef. 
 
 However, the rest of the committee's draft report findings were passed at the Cambodia meeting, effectively putting the government on notice that the Great Barrier Reef will join Unesco's "in danger" list at its next annual meeting if improvements are not made. 
 
 The committee is concerned that the Queensland and federal governments have made "no clear commitment toward limiting port development to existing port areas". The report also urges Australia to ensure that the expansion of existing ports does not damage the "outstanding universal value" of the reef. 
 
 More than 150 Australian and international scientists signed a letter on the eve of the World Heritage meeting calling for urgent action to safeguard the reef. 
 
 Critics claim proposed expansion of coal and gas export terminals, such as at Townsville, and new major new export developments, such as Abbot Point, will hurt coral, turtles, dugongs and other wildlife through increased shipping and waste from dredging. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Queensland government, which has previously referred to itself as being "in the coal business", has also attacked the federal government for being too closely aligned to green groups and risking jobs and investment to the state. 
 
 Tony Burke, the federal environment minister, said he was pleased that the committee had recognised progress that Australia had made on managing the reef. 
 
 "The Great Barrier Reef is an iconic environmental asset and the Australian government is absolutely committed to the protection of the reef and our oceans. It's one of the most precious places on Earth," he said. 
 
 "I am pleased that the final report takes into account more recent commitments by the government to safeguard the reef including a further $200m for the next stage of Reef Rescue. 
 
 "The Australian government is also pleased that the decision recognises the progress Australia has made on the comprehensive strategic assessment, including important new research which will help ensure that the reef is protected in accordance with the best available science. 
 
 "There are a number of threats facing the reef, including climate change, coastal developments, agricultural runoff, ocean acidification and outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns starfish. We are working to address each of these, on land and in the ocean." 
 
 A spokesperson for Greg Hunt, the shadow environment minister, said that an incoming Coalition government would focus on reducing the pollution that damages the reef. 
 
 "We welcome the acknowledgement of the improvements in water management on the reef," the spokesperson said. "It is an important responsibility of the Australian government and in that context it was disappointing that Minister Burke had delayed the re-commitment to the Reef Rescue funding." 
 
 "If elected, the Coalition will implement a Reef 2050 plan with a focus on water quality and increased action to address run-off and the subsequent threat posed by the Crown of Thorns." 
 
 Greens senator Larissa Waters, whose bill to halt new developments beside the reef was rejected by the government, said that urgent action was now needed to avoid the 'in danger' listing. 
 
 "The old parties are letting the big mining companies treat the Great Barrier Reef as a dumping ground for dredge spoil and a shipping super highway and the world is watching and sending a clear warning that this is simply unacceptable," she said. 
 
 "The Queensland and federal governments now have a year to act on the World Heritage Committee's recommendations to save the Great Barrier Reef from being added to the list of sites in danger." ||||| GWEN IFILL: Scientists are searching for clues to what’s been killing starfish up and down the West Coast. The mysterious die-offs were first noticed in Washington State. 
 
 That’s where KCTS Seattle has been partnering with the environmental public media project EarthFix to get to the bottom of the epidemic. 
 
 Special correspondent Katie Campbell reports. 
 
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 KATIE CAMPBELL: Something strange is happening in Seattle’s waters. Laura James was one of the first to notice. She alerted scientists when starfish began washing up on the shores near her home. 
 
 LAURA JAMES, diver/videographer: And I thought, you know what? This is getting a little too close for comfort. I need go see what’s going on and I need document it. 
 
 KATIE CAMPBELL: As a diver and underwater videographer, James was equipped to do something. She decided to take her camera to a spot popular among both divers and starfish. These pilings are usually covered with a rainbow of starfish. On a recent dive, James discovered a scene from a horror film. 
 
 LAURA JAMES: There were just bodies everywhere. And they were just like splats. To me, it always looked like somebody had taken a laser gun and just zapped them and they just vaporized. 
 
 KATIE CAMPBELL: Starfish, also known as sea stars, are wasting away by the tens of thousands, not just in Puget Sound, but up and down North America’s Pacific Coast. And nobody knows why. 
 
 LAURA JAMES: I have been diving out here for almost 24 years, and people always ask me, do you see any big difference between now and when you started? 
 
 And I have seen some subtle differences, but this is the change of my lifetime. We have had now occasional die-offs here and there, but it’s not like this. It’s not a mass mortality event. 
 
 I’m just a diver. I need to find out what the scientists know. 
 
 KATIE CAMPBELL: But scientists have also been wondering what’s going on. They first started noticing sick and dying starfish on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula last summer. 
 
 Reports have since surfaced from Southern California to as far north as Alaska. At first, only a certain species known as the sunflower star seemed to be affected. Then it hit another species, then another. In all, about a dozen species of sea stars are dying along the West Coast. It’s been coined sea star wasting syndrome, and it’s also been reported at sites along the East Coast. 
 
 But researchers say it’s too early to connect these outbreaks. 
 
 BEN MINER, Biology Professor, Western Washington University: You know, I was surprised, too, that the crabs weren’t just… 
 
 KATIE CAMPBELL: Ben Miner is a biology professor at Western Washington University. He studies how environmental changes affect marine life. 
 
 Today, his team is collecting sea stars at Mukilteo, Washington, just north of Seattle. 
 
 BEN MINER: The population of sea stars is — they were quite abundant at that site. And so on the pilings, there were healthy sea stars, but we were also coming across arms and piles of deteriorated sea stars and individuals that were twisted. 
 
 KATIE CAMPBELL: The divers are searching for stars showing symptoms, as well as the ones that appear healthy. 
 
 BEN MINER: The experiments are infectiousness experiments, where we take individuals that have signs of the syndrome and we put them in tanks with individuals that don’t have signs. 
 
 KATIE CAMPBELL: Then they closely watch the progress of the disease. First, the stars twist their arms into knots, and sometimes lesions form on their skin. 
 
 BEN MINER: One of them was very sick, and the other two individuals started ripping themselves apart. The arms just crawl away from the particular body. 
 
 KATIE CAMPBELL: You heard that right. The arms crawl in opposite directions, until they tear away from the body and their insides spill out. And unlike most starfish, the arms don’t regenerate. Stars that came in with symptoms died within 24 hours. 
 
 BEN MINER: Interestingly, though, I didn’t see the individuals that were exposed to those dying individuals show symptoms any more rapidly than individuals in the other tanks. 
 
 KATIE CAMPBELL: So being in the same tank with a dying starfish doesn’t seem to accelerate the disease. 
 
 Divers recently returned to Mukilteo to find that most of the starfish there have died. But we still don’t know how they’re catching the illness or where it comes from. Could an infectious pathogen from the other side of the world have hitched a ride on oceangoing ships? Or could it be something larger, like climate change or ocean acidification? 
 
 DREW HARVELL, Cornell University: So, this is a healthy Pycnopodia, no signs of lesions. 
 
 KATIE CAMPBELL: Drew Harvell is coordinating the research into answering these questions. She’s a marine epidemiologist from Cornell University who is studying at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs in the San Juan Island. 
 
 Harvell is sending these samples to Cornell. There, they will be analyzed for viruses, as well as bacteria and other protozoa. The first step, she says, is to figure out the distinct characteristic that identify the disease. 
 
 DREW HARVELL: We know organisms get sick, they get bacteria, they get viruses, just like humans do. They get the cold and the sniffles, but it’s a lot harder to see it happening when they’re under the ocean. 
 
 KATIE CAMPBELL: Scientists worry the loss of sea stars could have far-reaching ecological consequences. That’s because they’re voracious predators. They gobble up mussels, clams, sea cucumbers, and even other starfish. 
 
 DREW HARVELL: Because these are ecologically important species. When you lose this many sea stars, it will certainly change the seascape. 
 
 BEN MINER: It certainly suggests that those ecosystems are not healthy. To have diseases that can affect that many species, that widespread is, I think, just scary.d 
 
 KATIE CAMPBELL: If there’s a silver lining, it may be studying this outbreak could shed light on how marine diseases spread. 
 
 That’s a question Laura James is hoping citizen scientists can help answer. 
 
 LAURA JAMES: The big problem we had here is that we didn’t have a baseline. The starfish got sick when we noticed. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could show this in real time and show the spread and the changes in real time? 
 
 KATIE CAMPBELL: James and her dive buddy built a Web site for tracking posts to social media sites with the hashtag sickstarfish. 
 
 LAURA JAMES: Take a picture of any starfish you find when you’re out tide pooling or just walking on the beach, and hashtag it sickstarfish. And then we can look at it when it pops up on the map, or if we’re not sure, we can send it to the scientists, and they can take a look at it. 
 
 We may not be able to stop it, and we may not be able to fix it, but we need to be aware, so that we can recognize it when it happens again. 
 
 KATIE CAMPBELL: All this research may be paying off. Scientists think they’re honing in on the cause and hope to make an announcement in a few months. 
 
 GWEN IFILL: New experiments started in Washington State this week to test possible infectious agents.
– The number of coral-plundering crown of thorns starfish could boom from some 12 million to 60 million over the next four years, the Brisbane Times reports, and for Australia's Great Barrier Reef that would be akin to "a locust plague devastating vegetation," says Glen Holmes, co-author of The Starfish That Eat The Reef. This winter, though, an aquatic robot will be deployed to help slow the invasion of the invertebrates … by killing them, Scientific American reports. The COTSbot, developed at the Queensland University of Technology, is a small submarine outfitted with cameras, sonar, GPS, and a syringe-tipped arm. Following a pre-programmed path along the reef, the robot scans for crown of thorns starfish. Once it identifies its target, the COTSbot pumps it full of bile salts that, as Scientific American puts it, "digest the animal from the inside" before it can separate and regenerate (one starfish can produce millions of young). The COTSbot, which can kill more than 200 starfish in eight hours, will augment the efforts of human divers. “It's now so good it even ignores our 3D-printed decoys and targets only live starfish,” one researcher says. It is believed the starfish has destroyed some 230 square miles of live coral in the past three decades, per the Times, which says the outbreak may be linked to starfish-nourishing algal blooms resulting from fertilizer runoff. Overfishing of the starfish's predators may also be to blame, per Scientific American. Check out the COTSbot in action in this video.