Sabah Parks officials and Downbelow Marine and Wildlife Adventures’ premier PADI 5 Star IDC Dive Centre discuss a new programme to control Crown of Thorns population within the TAR marine park!

General Operations Manager Paul Jones details the efforts of our dive operations in contributing to the removal of the environmentally detrimental population bloom of the Crown of Thorns seastars. The species of seastar is a voracious carnivore that consumes healthy coral at a devastating rate, and resulting in an imbalance in the marine environment. A new programme to control their numbers is under discussion, in which a lethal injection can be administered into the seastars to prevent them from feeding on coral reef.

Paul also discussed the recent ghost net removals conducted by our island staff team and professional scuba diving internship candidates: from the dive sites typically found with an illegally discarded fishing net, to the material of net most widely used.

All involved (Project AWARE divers, dive operators, local authorities) are looking forward to the positive effect new future programmes will have on the health of our local marine environment in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah!