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27/04/2006: "CROWN OF THORNS (1974)"

It was our last day at sea in May 1974 before returning to Yeppoon, Queensland, aboard Coralita with Captain Wally Muller guiding us through the Swain Reefs.

Captain Wal knew these waters better than any other skipper. He’d fished them commercially from aboard his Riversong for decades.

When asked how Mystery Cay was named, he replied: “I worked this area for years without seeing this one particular reef. How I kept missing it, while passing by so close was……a mystery (to me)”.

This infestation of crown of thorns starfish was by far the largest I’d ever seen. We filmed what we saw and reported it in parts of the media and of course to the late Dr Robert Endean at the University of Queensland.

Movietone News (a weekly cinema released program) had previously produced a short news coverage from my 16mm footage from Lavers Cay in The Swain Reefs, but this was far worse with many tens of thousands of starfish feeding openly on the corals.

Reef fish were being displaced from normal hiding places under coral ledges. It was an awe inspiring and numbing sight.

My still pictures were hopeless under-exposed. I’d borrowed a roll of film and the speed was one stop slower than stated.

Today with a film scanner and computer the original slides are correctable and of use.

In the era the pictures were made there was hostile reaction from the tourist industry toward our discovery of more coral destroying starfish. The attitude seemed to be if the problem could be denied for long enough the problem would go away.

It just got worse and more frequent, but has since been replaced by global warming and coral bleaching as more news worthy topics. Clever?