The local government of the Island Garden Cityof Samal and its city tourism office together withthe Department of Tourism's Visit Davao SummerFestival (VDSF) held a crown-of-thorns starfishclean up on the reefs of Samal and TalicudIsland.The crown-of-thorns starfish, scientific nameAcanthaster planci, is a starfish that feeds oncorals. It looks like a typical starfish with thornsall over its body and has the ability to fit aroundcontours of corals where it feeds from. The rapidgrowth of the crown-of-thorns in the reefs ofSamal contributed to the decline of healthycorals and instead of leaving nature to do itscourse for recovery, human intervention isneeded to speed up recovery to healthier reefs.These star fishes also stings on humans andrequires days, if not weeks, to recover. Therewere two groups in two dive boats of more thana dozen divers per boat. One team is comprisedof the Davao Reef Diver's club and representedby its president, Dr. Fred Medina.On this team, Dr. Fred Medina gave a briefingon how to execute the cleanup of thesestarfishes. Instead of the usual collection ofthese starfishes, accumulate underwater inmesh based sacks, and then bury them in thesand, this has proven to be dangerous andrequires a lot of careful execution, the methodinstead is to inject acetic acid into these starfishes.Through the use of large syringes each loadedwith about 30ml of white vinegar, as the sourceFeature & Photos by Rodney C. Jao    8 of 24ENVIRONMENT