Abstract Summary
Crown-of-Thorns Starfish (CoTS) population outbreaks are one of the major threats to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). They are also the threat that is most directly and immediately manageable in the short term through active control. The scale of the CoTS problem, however, threatens to dwarf the resources available to combat it. It is therefore vitally important that CoTS control activities are conducted as efficiently and effectively as possible. The effectiveness of current CoTS control activities can be maximised by ensuring that CoTS are removed efficiently from areas of ecological or economic importance, or areas which foster the growth and spread of the population. Identifying and prioritising the areas where the greatest impact can be achieved requires knowledge of the current distribution of CoTS from control and surveillance activities, and a detailed understanding of the ecology that drives the spread of their population. At the same time, it is vital that the effectiveness of control actions is monitored to ensure the desired outcomes are being achieved, and to know when the CoTS population at a site has been successfully controlled and resources can be redirected to another site. The CoTS Control Centre is a tablet-based, ecologically-informed, on-water decision support system. It uses the cull and surveillance data collected by the control program, coupled with detailed ecological and management models, to recommend which sites control program staff should survey and which they should dive at, how often, and at what point they should move to the next priority site in order to achieve the greatest improvement in coral health and resilience on the GBR. It leverages advanced decision science techniques to compartmentalise the data and decisions that need to be made on-water on a daily basis from those made by program managers each month. It uses robust hierarchical decision trees to make optimal decisions under uncertainty and intermittent connectivity. It coordinates decisions across the fleet of control program vessels to optimise control strategies given current knowledge, while also generating the data required to improve our knowledge and decisions in the future.
