Word: starfishes
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...creatures are more aptly named. The crown-of-thorns, a large, reddish brown sea dweller, has as many as 21 arms, all covered with venomous spines that can temporarily paralyze a swimmer and provoke fits of vomiting. Known to biologists as Acanthaster planci, this sinister-looking, 2-ft.-wide starfish is an even greater menace to some of its tiny aquatic neighbors. It likes nothing better than to feed on the living coral reefs where it makes its home...
...decade ago. Since then it has laid waste to 100 sq. mi. of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest and most impressive collection of underwater coral formations. It has also destroyed nearly 22 miles of Guam's coral barrier. Marine biologists report similar starfish damage off Saipan, Fiji and the western Solomons. In only five years, says Oceanographer R. D. Gaul of San Diego's Westinghouse Ocean Research Laboratory, the starfish can destroy a coral atoll that may have taken thousands of years to form...
Thousands of plants along the coast were destroyed or stunted by the chemicals. On one reef, lobsters, shrimp and crabs were virtually wiped out, starfish and sea urchins vanished. In tidal zones, limpets and other browsing creatures that keep shore lines free of decayed material and control the growth of seaweed were decimated. As a result, portions of the Cornwall coast are overgrown with seaweed this year...
...Starfish, kelp, sacred cod, and a crab decorate the University's new organ, dedicated yesterday in a packed Memorial Church service...
...rush to rid itself of the weight of empire, Britain has often bestowed independence on lands that had no business accepting it. Botswana, for example, is an empty but now sovereign desert, Gambia a wriggle of jungle riverbank, and the Maldives a spatter of coral atolls mostly inhabited by starfish. Few lands, however, have been so ill-prepared to rule themselves as the Federation of South Arabia, which Britain announced last week will become independent by the end of November...