Starfish, crown of thorns, and sea stars live throughout the subtropics and tropics. They are bottom dwellers, so any contact with a diver is accidental. Injury occurs from the spine and the venom ...

These injections are currently the only way to cull coral-eating sea stars called crown-of-thorns, or COTS. Native to the Great Barrier Reef and reefs across the Indo-Pacific, crown-of-thorns are ...

A predator crown-of-thorns sea star eats an undefended coral, leaving visible white scares of exposed coral skeleton where the tissue has been removed. In Sept. 2014, Smithsonian scientists ...

Scientists and coral reef response team members are asking the public to report sightings of crown of thorns sea stars, so they can test a control method used in American Samoa and Australia.

Navy divers earlier this year removed nearly 200 crown of thorns sea stars found in the waters off Naval Base Guam, the Navy announced this week. The divers worked with marine scientists from ...

A new theory explains how juvenile crown-of-thorns sea stars (commonly known as starfish) can destabilize coral reefs. The 'degraded reef framework' explains how the loss of live coral ...