The reason why we are here...

The reason why we are in Australia is of course because my research and after a month's work it is time for some fresh scientific results!

My research project is funded by the Danish government, but my research animal is a tropical starfish called the crown-of-thorns starfish. The starfish is a big problem now since it will only eat corals and over the last 30 years they have been responsible for 40% of the coral loss at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Corals are very important since they create a habitat in which many fish thrive. In short, many marine animals rely on corals in one or more stages during their life and when corals disappear many marine animals will suffer. Coral decline is not good news for tourism either...

If you want to do research on the Great Barrier Reef the Marine Station where we are now is great. It is called the Australian Institute of Marine science, abbreviated to AIMS. It's an Australian wide governmental research institution and it carries out a lot of important research on the Great Barrier Reef.

Recently, my good friend and colleague in Denmark, Anders, published a paper together with the supervisor from my Ph.D. study Dan-Eric Nilsson, showing how another Coral Reef inhabiting starfish uses its eyes to find its way back to the reef. At this point in time we already have proof that the crown-of-thorns starfish does the same and it too uses its eyes to find coral reefs.

What I am doing here in Townsville is finding out which particular visual cues are used by the starfish. I have good laboratory facilities and in short what I do is, I put the animals in a circular arena where I can control what the animals see on the horizon. I put patterns with different sizes, grey tone, stripes and circles onto the horizon of the arena and see whether the animals respond to the patterns or not. From this I can determine exactly which visual cue they use for navigation.

The exact causes of the recent increase in numbers of crown-of-thorns starfish and the resulting decrease of Coral reefs is still debated along with the role that humans play in this phenomenon. I actually went to an interesting lecture today just about this topic. I'm quite convinced my project won't be able to address the cause of the problem, however I'm hoping my findings will help constructing a bait for the animals which will make it easier to catch starfish and reduce their numbers on a short-term basis giving us time to find the cause of the problem and act.