FathomOz

Double click picture

A larger and similar picture is at  http://fathomoz.wordpress.com

Walter A.Starck, Vic Ley, Ron Taylor, Phil Eather, Richard Weir, Wally Gibbins, Mal McLeod, Gai Girdlestone, John Harding

Wally Muller, Van Laman, Ben Cropp, Kathy Troutt, Lynn Roberts, John Michael Harding, Bob Grounds, Dean Cropp, Ron Taylor, Trevor Collins (with marlin), Valerie May Taylor, Henri Bource, Wally Gibbins-John Sumner-Terry Morrison,

The Late IRVIN ROCKMAN  CBE

It’s unusual for the tourist industry to be advertising a pest that is destroying coral reefs.  This postcard was published by the late Peter Erbe of Cairns.

A first edition postcard was sent (by me)  to Queensland starfish research scientist, Dr Robert Endean care of University of Queensland, but he never received it.

The card was therefore ‘pinched’ and would be an exceptional collectors item if it still exists.

At Guam (USA) Robert Endean dived on a starfish colony and ‘tested’ the agonizing pain the needle sharp spines produce.

More than sixty internationally-known coral reef scientists, expert divers, underwater photographers were invited to the US island of Guam during July 1969.  Crown-of-Thorns starfish were thought to be a serious threat to coral reef ecology in the Pacific – as serious as human induced global warming is thought to be today!

Among those brought to Guam was Australia’s Dr Robert Endean who later campaigned for decades on behalf of a wider understanding of coral reef ecology on the Great Barrier Reefs in Australia.   Endean was up against a state premier who was also the police minister.  It was going to be a difficult battle.