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01/09/2005: "RICHARD CHESHER ......... USA marine scientist"
Richard Chesher PhD (standing) speaks to Peter Wilson (Micronesia fisheries). Alongside are Australian's Robert Endean and GT Harrison (right).
This meeting/gathering at the University of Guam was to prepare some of the world's leading coral reef experts and divers/photographers for their assignments.
Two of the Australians present were selected to survey underwater the polynesian atoll coral reefs at Kapingamarangi, Nukuoro.
(Mentioned extensively elsewhere - more for anthropology than for coral eating starfish - whose presence was fortunately minimal).
"I organized a survey of the north Pacific from Hawaii to Palau, and the Northern Marianas Islands to Kapingimarangi. The expedition was supported by the U.S. Department of the Interior and managed by Westighouse Ocean Research Laboratories.
I headed a team of 69 diver/scientists that were divided into groups of 10 and sent out to survey conditions in as many locations as possible.
Bob Endean said, right away, that he thought that the cause of the starfish explosion was because the tritons were overcollected.
Other biologists, including me, thought this unlikely. But now, after investigating the infestations nearly 30 years, I think Bob was right after all. Or partly right.
Certainly the tritons are the major predator on the starfish. And they are overcollected, even endangered or locally extinct, in most areas of the Pacific."
