Crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) are a major threat to coral on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and across the Indo-Pacific. Of the increasing threats faced by the GBR, including cyclones and bleaching, COTS are the only threat amenable to immediate control. Implementing management strategies that can reduce COTS impacts to an ecologically-meaningful degree is vital to conserving coral and fostering the resilience of the GBR.
In 2018, with key managers and researchers, we designed an ecological framework to underpin Australia’s COTS Control Program, and a set of decision-support tools to facilitate its implementation. The Program: 1) targets effort at high priority locations at an intensity sufficient to preserve coral cover; 2) allows each decision to be made by on-water staff and managers using control program data; and 3) robustly generates ecologically-meaningful outcomes in spite of knowledge gaps and operational complexities.
Under the COTS Control Innovation Program (CCIP), this work is being refined to incorporate new innovations capable of driving improved outcomes for management, research, and the resilience of the GBR. This presentation will outline new innovations in the Program and the decision tools we have built, how they are implemented on-water, and how they have improved the resilience of the GBR.