A staggering 450kg haul of invasive seastars have been pulled from waters off Australia’s southernmost capital city.
More than 3,100 Northern Pacific seastars were recovered on the weekend by a team of 19 scuba divers and six snorkellers near Hobart’s Bellerive Yacht Club.
Their bright orange colouring makes them easy to spot underwater, and they can grow to a massive 50cm in width.
Tasmanian authorities describe the animal as a “large, aggressive predator” that feasts on native oysters, mussels and scallops.
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Divers pulled more than 450kg of invasive seastars from an estuary of the River Derwent.
(Keith Thomas-Wurth)
The creature uses its five arms to pry open their shells and devour their flesh, causing problems for both the environment and commercial fishers.
Hobart has a native species of orange seastar, the Tasmanian live-bearing seastar, but it grows to just 1.5 cm long and is listed as vulnerable to extinction.
Why the seastar cleanup was needed
With no natural predators in Australia, the invasive seastar quickly takes over marine ecosystems, and so intervention is required.
The clean-up was organised in an estuary off the River Derwent by local diver Keith Thomas-Wurth through his Invasive Seastar Clean Up group, and supported by Go Dive Tasmania.
In July, Thomas-Wurth estimated his group had cleared hundreds of thousands since 2021.
The 450kg of seastars were collected on the back of a ute.
(Mia Southon)
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Pictures taken on Sunday show a massive pile of seastars collected on the back of a ute for disposal.
Although the average weight of a seastar is just 100 grams, the largest they recovered was 145 grams.
The species is thought to have hitched a ride to Australia as larvae in the ballast water of ships visiting from Asia.
They were first detected in Tasmania in 1986 and had spread across Bass Strait to Victoria by 1995.
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