By Kev Kelly

Responding to a request from SEAL Diving for volunteers to assist with a search for Northern Pacific seastars, Darren Eldridge and I along with 12 other divers rolled up at Inverloch on May 19. The NP seastar, a serious threat to the marine ecosystem, has recently been found at Wilson Prom.

The job was part of a study by Melbourne University and a PHD candidate, Kimberley Millers, was on the trip. She and Rob Timmers had sown the survey area with toy seastars, the idea being to see how many we could recover and thereby assess the effectiveness of volunteer divers in detecting and eradicating the pest. We were also to collect any real specimens we saw.
We did two drift dives in 6 metres of 30 and 40 minutes and collected a bit over half the test seastars. Thankfully no real subjects were found so hopefully they haven't got a foothold in that part of the world.
The introduced NP seastar is even more of a threat than local seastars because scallops and other prey don't recognise it as a threat and don't flee when it comes close.
Free lunch and airfills were a bonus but the best part was being able to help in a small way to protect our marine environment.