NewsRecord Weekly Publication

Salanay in Sipaway

Indeed, it is a worldwide problem affecting the Philippines and Australia. This 20-tentacled, spike laden creature called crown of thorn starfish (COT) or salanay is wrecking havoc in the world's most precious coral reefs including the recently revived ones within San Carlos City waters.

Painful crown. Crown of thorn starfish may appear in different glorious colors but marine biologists declared it the suspect of killing corals.
Photo source:  http://coralpeople.wordpress.com/fauna/

SPO1 Noven Martin Lacson sounded the alarm on July 15, when he and his family were at Dapdap Jetty port, Sipaway Island. COTs alarmingly climbed up the cemented stairs of the port threatening the unknowing beachcombers. Lacson, a veteran diver and gatherer of COTs during annual coastal clean-ups, immediately warned people in the area and, using tongs, gathered about half a sack of the coral-eaters. He just prevented a mishap knowing that once stepped on, COT can paralyze a victim and kill affected muscle tissues. It's deadlier than sea urchins or tuyom.

But this is not news, told marine biologist Edward Burgos of the Fisheries and Coastal Resources Management Section of the City Agriculture Office. Since January this year, 1,899 COTs had been gathered. The peak of infestation had been during the first two months. This is already benign and totally under control, Burgos explained.

The crisis was in 2007 when around 40,000 COTs were manually gathered by Bantay Dagat-San Carlos with the help of the Sipaway fisher folks and other coastal communities in the city.

Although the phenomenon depends solely on the unpredictability of COTs (sometimes they appear in alarming numbers and suddenly disappear), Burgos said the coral cover of reefs off Sipaway Island is improving, past the 2007 crisis and way beyond the poor survey result in 2002.

In 2002 Silliman University surveyed the reefs here and found only 25.33 percent coral cover. After proper training, Bantay Dagat-San Carlos performed its own survey in 2008 and found a 44.38 percent cover, a good 19.05 percent increase.

While some fisher folks off the island of two barangays accuse that gathering COTs caused them to spread even more rapidly, Burgos shook his head and clarified that manually gathering those creatures are the only proven way of controlling the infestation. But he doesn't refer to wanton gathering. Tongs are needed and a skilled diver has to make sure he or she doesn't hit the soft insides of a COT that contains thousands of eggs.

There could be endless pointing of fingers but as many experts say, the population of this coral-feeding creature has become destructive since the balance of the marine ecosystem has been disrupted. Tritons, its natural predators, are now nowhere to be seen, after illegal and greedy harvesting, tipping the balance off to the demise of the precious corals.