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School of Geography and the Environment

MSc and MPhil Dissertation

Coversheet

Candidate Number: 555094

MSc course: Nature, Society, Environmental Governance

Dissertation Title: The Aquarium and The Pest: Governing Futures on the Great Barrier Reef

Word count: 14,974

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Abstract

This Great Barrier Reef is said to be in the Anthropocene. This dissertation examines what such an

assertion might entail. Drawing particularly on Ben Anderson’s work, I argue an affective condition of

urgency has suffused reef science and management in response to the uncertain future of the Great

Barrier Reef. This orientation towards the future conditions how the Reef is acted for/on in the present.

Then, drawing on recent literature on ‘awkward’ animals in more-than-human research, and on

governing futures, I examine what the Anthropocene Reef means for crown-of-thorns starfish. These

large starfish feed on corals, and are prone to population outbreaks which devastate coral communities.

Controlling them has become one of the defining management interventions on the Great Barrier Reef.

I discuss how this project unfolds, and its implications for how we understand governing more-than-

human life in the Anthropocene

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Acknowledgments

My deepest thanks go to those people I met during my fieldwork: everyone at Lizard Island, my

interviewees, and to a UChicago anthropologist: a friendly face in a sea of marine scientists. Their

disarming friendliness and openness made this research a true pleasure.

And to my supervisor. I am deeply thankful for your enthusiasm and encouragement, and perhaps most

for the odd disparaging comment. A bit of friendly cynicism and a raised eyebrow can sometimes be

the best feedback.

For my obsession with underwater worlds, I am forever in debt to Pappa, my grandfather.

This research hinged on the generous contributions of my parents, college, and the geography

department. In tighter times the signal crayfish in the Cherwell would, I’m sure, have been worthy

research subjects. But I’m glad I was able to visit Australia.

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Table of Figures

Figure 1: Malcolm Turnbull stands in front of an aquarium at AIMS. Source: AAP...............................7Figure2:Amassofcrown-of-thornsstarfish.Source:AIMS.....................Error!Bookmarknotdefined.Figure3:LizardIslandResearchStation.Source:SimonNiklaus............................................................19Figure4:Manualcontrolofstarfish.Source:TravelNQ........................................................................27Figure5:Acrown-of-thornsstarfishatAIMS.Source:Author...............................................................30Figure6:Decision-making.Source:Author/CSIRO.................................................................................31Figure7:Managementmodel.Source:CSIRO........................................................................................32Figure8:Visualizationofcoral/COTS/fundingcycles.Source:CSIRO.....................................................32Figure9:Outbreaktemporalities.Source:AIMS....................................................................................33Figure10:Atritonengulfsastarfish.Source:AIMS...............................................................................35Figure11:Atritonattemptsaget-away.Source:Author......................................................................36

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Table of abbreviations

AIMS Australian Institute of Marine Science

COTS Crown-of-thorns starfish

CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

CRFS Coral Reef Futures Symposium

GBRMPA The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority

GBRRS Great Barrier Reef Restoration Symposium

IPM Integrated Pest Management

JCU James Cook University

RRAP The Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program

RRRC Reef and Rainforest Research Centre

UQ University of Queensland

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Table of Contents

ABSTRACT 2

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 3

TABLE OF FIGURES 4

TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS 5

1. INTRODUCTION 7

1.1 THE GREAT BARRIER REEF 81.2 THE CROWN-OF-THORNS STARFISH 81.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 10

2. LITERATURE REVIEW 11

2.1 MORE-THAN-HUMAN SCHOLARSHIP 112.2. THE ANTHROPOCENE 122.3. BIOSECURITY 132.4. BIOPOLITICS 132.5. ANTICIPATORY ACTION 142.6. SOCIAL SCIENCE AT SEA 15

3. METHODOLOGY 17

3.1. METHODOLOGICAL DEBATES IN HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 173.2. MORE-THAN-HUMAN RESEARCH 173.3 METHODS 183.3.1. LIZARD ISLAND 183.3.2. EVENT ETHNOGRAPHY 203.3.3. INTERVIEWS 21

4. ANALYSIS 23

4.1. THE GREAT BARRIER REEF AS AN AQUARIUM 234.1.1. THE ‘BIG BLUE’ ASSERTS AN UNWILLINGNESS TO COOPERATE 234.1.2. CORAL REEFS IN THE ANTHROPOCENE 244.1.3. REEF RESTORATION AND ADAPTATION 254.2. CROWN-OF-THORNS STARFISH CONTROL 274.2.1. PRODUCING STARFISH AS CONTROLLABLE 274.2.2. THE PEST 284.2.3. INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT 294.2.4. WHEN IS A CROWN-OF-THORNS STARFISH A PEST? 304.2.5. PRIORITIZATION AND STRATEGY 314.2.6. EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT? 324.3. ALTERNATIVE CONTROL LOGICS 334.3.1. THE EARLY WARNING SYSTEM 334.3.2. ‘NATURAL’ CONTROL 344.3.3. GIANT TRITON SNAILS 354.3.4. FISH PREDATION 364.3.5. PLURAL APPROACHES 37

5. CONCLUSION 39

REFERENCES 41

APPENDICES 50

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1. Introduction

On April 29th 2018, the ex-Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull announced an AUD 444

million “record investment in the Great Barrier Reef” (Turnbull Government, 2018). More specifically,

this was an investment in the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, a small organisation which promotes

innovative solutions “grounded in science, technology, engineering and on-ground action…to protect

and restore the Great Barrier Reef and build its resilience” (GBRF, 2018). In media coverage of the

decision, since dubbed ‘Reefgate’ for all the contention it has generated, Turnbull is usually pictured in

front of this aquarium at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

Figure 1: Malcolm Turnbull stands in front of an aquarium at AIMS. Source: AAP

Is this carefully-crafted aquarium, in all its brilliant color and liveliness, the Great Barrier Reef?

Perhaps not. It is certainly more convenient for Turnbull to stand by this miniature than to kit up in

SCUBA equipment and descend to the Reef itself. However, I suggest this aquarium might help us in

considering shifting management logics and priorities regarding the Great Barrier Reef. What are

politicians and others referring to when they commit to ‘protect’ the Reef? What, precisely, is being

protected and how is this achieved?

There has been a recent move in more-than-human research towards ‘awkward’ creatures (Ginn et al.,

2014; Lorimer, 2014). This ‘widening bestiary’ (Ginn, 2014) expands an established concern with

affirmative relations with animals ‘big like us’ (Hird, 2009), to interrogate the darker corners of

human-animal relations: where “togetherness is difficult…vulnerability is in the making, and death is at

hand” (Ginn et al., 2014:113). Widening is perhaps an appropriately two-dimensional descriptor for a

bestiary which has expanded relatively little in to the subsurface worlds of the ocean. Given the

abundance of difficult togetherness, vulnerability and death to be found in these worlds, this appears

strange.

An oceanic sensibility is, however, developing elsewhere in human geography. The turbulent, churning

ocean challenges spatial orderings and received categories, proving a useful resource to unsettle and

rethink prominent terrestrial ontologies in favor of more fluid, or ‘wet’ ontologies (Steinberg & Peters,

2015; see also Bear, 2013; Merchant, 2011). Here, the ocean is productive for thinking about space. It

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is equally so for thinking about time. The future and the past of marine ecosystems are prominent ways

of relating to them in the present: fish stocks used to be healthy; oceans used to be plastic-free; polar

ice will disappear, so will coral reefs. How does this folding of time affect how oceans and oceanic life

are related to and acted for/on in the present? Scholars elsewhere have pointed to the privileging of the

future in contemporary life: “we live in times where what has not happened qualifies as front page

news…(and) periodically takes blaring precedence over what has actually happened” (Massumi,

2009:52). A shifting governmental logic treats the future as already incubating in the present, and

amenable to various anticipatory actions, through which the unfolding of events might be guided and

secured (e.g. Anderson, 2010, 2017).

Cultivating an attentiveness to the ocean and oceanic life, then, seems a worthwhile endeavor for

multiple strands of human geographical thought. This dissertation embraces this project, looking

particularly to how a changing ocean and the responses it engenders come to bear upon the livelihoods

of particular marine creatures. I take as my focus a highly charismatic marine ecosystem, the Great

Barrier Reef, threatened by a thoroughly awkward creature: the crown-of-thorns starfish.

1.1 The Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) comprises around 3000 individual reefs, together forming the world’s

largest coral reef ecosystem. These reefs only make up 7% of the area of the Great Barrier Reef Marine

Park, established in 1975, which covers around 344,000km2 and extends for 2300km. The boundaries

of the park also designate the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, established by UNESCO in

1981 (GBRMPA, 2014). The Reef is frequently described as globally iconic, and regarded as one of the

world’s best known ecosystems (GBRMPA, 2018), whilst also tied to Australian national identity, and

Australia’s international image. However, between 1985 and 2012, the Great Barrier Reef lost over

half of its initial coral cover (De’ath et al., 2012), and the mass coral bleaching events of 2016 and

2017 resulted in extensive further coral death over two-thirds of the Reef (Hughes et al., 2018).

Obituaries for the Reef have abounded in response: lamenting its death, that ‘it’s too late’, or at best

suggesting a visit ‘before it’s gone’ (Knaus & Evershed, 2017; Piggott-McKellar & McNamara, 2017).

Emerging amongst Reef scientists and managers is a recognition that coral reefs have entered the

Anthropocene, a distinct new geological epoch in which globally dispersed human activities are

profoundly reshaping the earth generally and the Great Barrier Reef specifically. This recognition is

remaking management practices and priorities on the Reef, which come to bear upon the Reef’s diverse

inhabitants in particular ways.

1.2 The Crown-of-thorns starfish

The crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS/crown-of-thorns- Acanthaster spp.) is unnerving and brilliant to

behold. This largest of starfish can grow to 700mm across, and their brownish bodies and up to 21 arms

are covered in venomous spines (e.g. Moran, 1986). When attacked they release a cloud of toxic

saponins, which can kill fish predators after prolonged exposure. Whilst endemic across the Indo-

Pacific, they were considered rare before the 1960s (e.g. Moran, 1986). Since then, their propensity

towards cyclic population outbreaks which devastate coral communities has generated much attention,

and they are thought to be responsible for almost half of the coral loss on the Reef over the last 30

years (De’ath et al., 2012). Four starfish outbreaks have been recorded on the GBR since the 1960s.

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They have, during that time, been the object of a major controversy in tropical marine science (Sapp,

1999), becoming one of the most studied species groups in the discipline (Pratchett, Caballes, et al.,

2017).

Figure2:Amassofcrown-of-thornsstarfish.Source:AIMS

“(There is) a war, in Oceania…Against an animal, an enigma; once only a rare, curious-looking

member of coral communities, now a biological nightmare” (Chesher, 1969: 84-85)

The first crown-of-thorns outbreak coincided with the release of Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), and a

plague of alien coral predators seemed just the kind of environmental disaster predicted (e.g. Sapp,

1999). For one observer, “H.G. Wells could scarcely have bettered the sense of helplessness and

chilling menace induced by the huge and venomous starfish” (Dixon, 1969:226). Drawn to reefs for

their diversity and charisma, scientists were understandably perturbed to find swathes of reef under

attack from such an outlandish creature, and early accounts are characterized by alarm, diagnoses of

invasions, and a certainty that outbreaks must be unnatural (e.g. Pearson & Endean, 1969). However, it

was equally possible outbreaks were integral to reef systems, and had been occurring long before

scientists began to pay attention (Kenchington & Kelleher, 1992; Swan, 1992). Bent on determining

whether or not outbreaks were natural, the overarching concern has nevertheless been with

management. If outbreaks were human-induced, then surely this merited attempts at control (Pearson &

Endean, 1969). Whilst if natural, this seemed ill-advised (Swan, 1992). Fifty years on from early

reports, questions at the centre of the controversy remain unresolved and contested, and yet in the last

year alone the Australian Government has invested AUD 82.8 million in crown-of-thorns control

(Cameron, 2018).Thus, “In reality, the decision to aggressively defend coral reef ecosystems against

the devastation caused by CoTS outbreaks has already been made” (Pratchett et al., 2017:26).

This dissertation has two aims structured in to three sections. First, I draw on anthropologist Gísli

Pálsson’s notion of the aquarium, used to disclose a manageable, knowable ocean (Pálsson, 1998). The

Anthropocene both unsettles the aquarium, taken to imply “returning reefs to past configurations is no

longer an option” (Hughes et al., 2017:82), and brings about intensified attempts to return the Reef to

aquarium-like conditions and configurations. I argue these attempts are varied manifestations of an

affective condition of urgency. Anderson describes an affective condition as a particular force shaping

“how something is habitually encountered, disclosed, and can be related to…becoming part of the

emotions that will infuse policies or programmes, and (which) may be transmitted through assemblages

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of people, information and things that attempt to organise life” (2012:37). Here, urgency discloses the

Reef in terms of looming or already-existing catastrophes, crises and emergencies (Anderson, 2017),

which infuses contemporary management and scientific logics.

Crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks are inextricably implicated in this condition. As the need for

management intensified, starfish emerged as an appealing, discrete object-target of control. My second

concern thus centres around how changing logics come to bear on crown-of-thorns starfish. I discuss

attempts to produce starfish as controllable under Integrated Pest Management, an overarching

framework which promotes a multi-pronged approach to control. I examine the most significant of

these prongs, manual control, as a mode of reactive biosecurity.

Then, I interrogate three further prongs: the ‘early warning system’ researchers are developing to

anticipate and prepare for future outbreaks, and ‘natural’ control with fish and giant triton snails. I

argue these signal a shift towards anticipation and a more fluid management logic which embraces

multiplicity, albeit one which has to contend with reactive logics for what gets done.

1.3 Research Questions

Focusing my analysis are the following questions:

A) How might the figure of the aquarium and the notion of an affective condition be useful

for tracking shifting management logics on the Great Barrier Reef?

B) How do these shifting logics produce crown-of-thorns starfish as controllable?

C) How are emerging, alternative, spatial-temporal logics newly shaping attempts to control

crown-of-thorns starfish?

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2. Literature review

This review comprises three sections. First, I outline relevant more-than-human scholarship, focusing

particularly on ‘awkward’ animals and convoluted human-animal relations. I then move towards a

discussion of varied modes of governing nonhuman life, and conclude by attending to recent social

scientific engagements with the ocean.

2.1 More-than-human scholarship

The subdiscipline of animal geography has developed into a differentiated and mature area of research

since a revival in the 1990s (Lorimer & Srinivasan, 2013; Whatmore, 2006). This forms part of what

might be termed a more-than-human ‘turn’ in social scientific scholarship, with parallel research

interests developing in cognate disciplines. Visible throughout this work is a commitment to enquiry in

which “all manner of things become more interesting once we stop assuming that ‘we’ are the only

place to begin and end our analysis” (Hinchliffe & Bingham, 2008: 1541). An expanding repertoire of

multispecies methods and concepts has aided this departure, producing far-reaching accounts of “how a

multitude of organisms’ livelihoods shape and are shaped by political, economic and cultural forces”

(Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010). From a diverse body of more-than-human work I draw specifically on

that which attends to ‘awkward’ or ‘unloved’ animals, the (bio)politics of conservation, as well as

literature on biosecurity.

Philo and Wilbert’s (2000) distinction between ‘animal spaces’ and ‘beastly places’ is useful when

considering animal geographies. The former refers to the spatial ordering of animals by humans and the

latter to the lived geographies and experiences of animals, how animals affect human lives and vice

versa. It is relatively well established that the latter has been less explored (e.g. Buller, 2015; Hodgetts

& Lorimer, 2015). This reflects a history of human-centered concepts and methodologies in human

geography (Hodgetts & Lorimer, 2015), which have proved better suited for thinking with animals

(Lévi-Strauss, 1962) than about them per se. Thus some scholars are developing techniques to allow

animals to ‘speak’, to “address what matters for both human and nonhuman animal subjects in their

various relational combinations and spaces” (Buller, 2015:376).

The literature has generally foregrounded a small number of animals with whom humans are already in

evident relation, often where togetherness is established and sought out (Bear & Eden, 2011; Ginn,

2014). Satisfying these criteria, dogs and horses have enjoyed an order of magnitude more attention

than other creatures (Buller, 2015). Of particular interest in the context of this research is work which

instead grapples with broadly ‘awkward’ animals. Evoking “disjuncture, discord and incompatibility”,

awkward discloses lifeforms and worlds which are strange and unfamiliar to prevalent modes of

enquiry in animal studies (Lorimer, 2014:195). Awkward animals exist at the ‘unruly edge’ (Tsing,

2012) of a “widening bestiary of companion species”(Ginn, 2014:533), including mushrooms (Tsing,

2012), fish (Bear & Eden, 2011), slugs (Ginn, 2014), and cup corals (Hayward, 2010). Other research

has probed deeper, exploring viruses (Greenhough, 2012) and even deep-sea methanotrophic microbes

(Helmreich, 2009). These creatures fit poorly with what Ginn et al. (2014) term ‘off-the-shelf’ ethics,

exposing the edges of our resolve to live convivially in multispecies worlds. In so doing, they alert us

to the need to explore a range of modes of ‘living with’ (Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010), involving

uncertainty, discomfort and violence.

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Unsurprisingly some research on awkward beings has been drawn towards invertebrates. Hayward

addresses the word itself as a convenient negative, symbolizing a lack of morality, firmness,

consistency, “a material-semiotic product of displacement and comparison” (Hayward, 2007:15).

Inhabiting the term, she suggests, can have lethal consequences. We see this in Ginn’s exploration of

human-slug relationships in British gardens. Slugs, figured as a pest, are enmeshed in a kind of (non)-

relationship with humans configured around death, and avoidance of encounter and relation (Ginn,

2014). Ginn’s pertinent message here is that the familiar more-than-human trope that we are in relation,

and thus ‘invited to care’, does not sufficiently accommodate those creatures with whom we do not

easily relate.

Wanderer (2015) asks similar questions of invasive goats and mice on Guadalupe island, Mexico.

Rather than straightforward disgust, avoidance, or destruction, she identifies a ‘care of the pest’ in field

biologists’ relations with invasive animals. Ultimately, Wanderer documents how this care becomes

essential to a ‘biology of betrayal’, informing effective eradication programs better attuned to those

species’ behaviors. This echoes in Srinivasan’s work on turtle conservation in India, where she posits

conservation practice as an entanglement of harm and care (Srinivasan, 2014).

Some of the darkest and most convoluted of human-animal relations occur underwater, and there is

undoubtedly space for further research here. Whilst a few examples outlined above deal with aquatic

creatures, more-than-human research on underwater creatures and environments is limited. In

particular, work in animal geography remains decidedly terrestrial in focus. Bear and Eden (2011) point

to the unfamiliarity of underwater environments and their creatures as an explanation, suggesting in

their case that fish have been excluded from research for their bodily characteristics and the spaces they

inhabit. They raise important questions regarding how one might ‘learn to be affected’ (Latour, 2004)

by creatures not readily apprehensible in form or place.

2.2. The Anthropocene

It helps to situate renewed geographical interest with the animal within wider concerns around

changing human-environment relations in ‘the Anthropocene’. In short, the Anthropocene thesis posits

that we have entered a new geological era distinct from the Holocene, in which humankind has become

a major geological force (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000). Inseparable from the development of earth

system science in the 1960s and 70s, the Anthropocene often appears in tandem with a vision of the

world as a single, coupled social-ecological system (Lövbrand, Stripple, & Wiman, 2009; Steffen et al.,

2015). Earth system scientists, and related sustainability scientists, often take the Anthropocene to

indicate a need for joined-up, multidisciplinary and solutions-focused enquiry, oriented towards new

modes of governance and management appropriate to this new era (Brondizio et al., 2016; Steffen et

al., 2015). Geographical engagements with the Anthropocene are broad-ranging (Castree, 2014),

notably including critique of its post-political implications (Swyngedouw & Ernstson, 2018), and

incitements for new modes of living and being in entangled, multispecies worlds (see e.g. Lorimer,

2017).

This enthusiasm for novel approaches also indicates the Anthropocene-as-threat: inviting new modes of

enquiry and practice but also undermining and imperiling existing modes (Hamilton, 2016). For

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Massumi, this is “a world that is in a permanently far-from-equilibrium critical condition” (Massumi,

2015:26), raising questions regarding how this overarching ‘threat-environment’ (Büscher, 2018)

conditions the whole gamut of human activities.

2.3. Biosecurity

Biosecurity consists of a great variety of practices attempting to ‘make life safe’. The term is

productively multiple, and so I necessarily draw only on parts of a broad literature. Hinchliffe and

Bingham (2008) point to several areas where the term is used, from which I syphon those attempts to

manage the movement of agricultural pests and diseases, and to reduce the effects of ‘invasive’ species

on ‘indigenous’ life. In both instances it should be clear that ‘making life safe’ refers to quite specific,

valued life made safe from the devalued lives of pests, diseases, and invasives.

Whilst much research has drawn on European examples, Australasia is often identified as amongst the

regions most alert to biosecurity issues. Animals and their movements are foregrounded here, given the

recent and pronounced effects of ‘ecological colonization’ and powerful imaginaries of primordial

nature (Hinchliffe & Bingham, 2008; Lavau, 2011). For Lavau, the recent history of European

settlement in Australia underlies a nonhuman ‘politics of belonging’: a heightened attunement to which

creatures have the right to ‘reside and prosper’ (and to die and disappear) in the country.

The terms ‘invasive’ and ‘pest’ are central to these politics of belonging. Generally both reflect a

judgment of damage, although in practice there is great fluidity in how particularly the invasive label is

applied and mobilized (Ernwein & Fall, 2015; Helmreich, 2009). Invasives and pests therefore tend to

be worked against, from small-scale damage control to total eradication. Where on this continuum

action is taken often reflects more than a straightforward judgment of harm. Scholars have outlined

distinctive politics of invasions, often mobilized to convey concerns for national/natural integrity,

embedding particular xenophobic inflections and discursive otherings (e.g. Ernwein & Fall, 2015). As

Ernwein and Fall illustrate, individual scientists and different scientific communities have divergent

strategies regarding how and when to reference ‘an invasion’, which can also be received by

(un)intended publics in unanticipated ways.

Invasions are also more than discursive and must be produced through practices of surveillance and

management, which differentiate the ‘unwelcome’ or ‘out-of-place’ from ‘the natural’. Law and Lien’s

‘emergent alien’ attends to this continuous differentiation in practice. In their case, maintaining the

distinction between wild (natural) and farmed (alien) salmon is further complicated by the ocean

constantly threatening to bring the two together. Whilst terrestrial invasions are well-documented, what

it means to be out-of-place in the ocean has received relatively less attention in the literature1 .

2.4. Biopolitics

Evident across many of these examples are the multiple politics at work in human-animal encounters.

Nonhuman nature is ordered, partitioned, promoted and excluded according to numerous logics and

strategies. Foucault’s notions of biopower and biopolitics, applied originally to the governing of human

life, have become increasingly prevalent in geographical accounts examining the operations of power

1AlthoughseeHelmreich,2009;Moore,20122SeeGinn’s‘slimychoreography’,2014

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in human-animal relations. Foucault (e.g. 2003) was concerned with the emergence of a new mode of

power attempting to take control of life, from the level of the body (anatamo-politics) to that of the

population (biopolitics). Biopolitics has therefore been used in varied contexts to explore how life-as-

population has become the target of techniques and technologies of power (e.g. Anderson, 2012).

Biopolitics has been reworked and mobilized in quite different ways, such that it is not always clear

how it is being used. However, a few interrelated points are important to distill from the literature.

First, biopower/biopolitics has not wholly displaced other forms of government and power, instead it

combines with these in rather ‘ad hoc’ ways (Braun, 2014) such that, second, there is no singular

biopolitics (Hinchliffe & Bingham, 2008). Practices and logics governing life can be multiple even

within an ostensibly singular situation. Lastly, despite lacking coherence, a differential valuation of life

is common to biopolitical projects: “to protect, care for, and sustain valued lives is to abandon, damage

and destroy other lives” (Anderson, 2012: 28).

The concept has therefore proved useful for interrogating specific regimes governing which animals

live and under what conditions (Biermann & Mansfield, 2014; Hodgetts, 2017; Srinivasan, 2014). Most

often conservation proceeds according to species-based logics (Biermann & Anderson, 2017), but the

beneficial population may be something else, like an ecosystem, and in some instances exactly what is

to be improved, and how, are contested.

Recent work has elucidated a more ‘environmental mode of biopower’ (Lorimer, 2017a) which works

with, rather than against, ecological processes. This ‘probiotic’ mode of government is concerned more

with valued processes than with distinct life forms, sharing an ‘ecological conception of life’ and an

interest in non-equilibrium ecologies. We might understand this in the context of a wider governmental

shift towards securing valued functions and circulations (e.g. Braun, 2014).

2.5. Anticipatory action

Projects seeking to secure valued life generally share a particular temporal logic, whereby conditions

are assessed and interventions work to improve those conditions in some way for something. Whilst on

the one hand these contretemps with present threats remain important and ongoing, on the other hand a

different logic of securing life, one of anticipation of and preparedness for not-yet-actualized threats, is

increasingly vital (Büscher, 2018; Massumi, 2015). The turbulent ‘far-from-equilibrium’ Anthropocene

world, “riddled with the anywhere-anytime potential for the proliferation of the abnormal” (Massumi,

2015:26), complicates attempts to enact stable, partitioned configurations or to draw precise

distinctions between valued/devalued life.

Anderson argues a set of events understood to threaten liberal democracies (for example terrorism,

disease, climate change) have resulted in a proliferation of anticipatory activities (2010). These

practices “act in relation to the contingencies of life by attempting to seize possession of the future

before it occurs and shaping how contingent decisions or events will unfold” (Anderson, 2012:39).

Threatening futures are made present and come to stand alongside already-existing threats as object-

targets of action (e.g. Braun, 2014; Anderson, 2012). These actions can be mundane, like the

‘detection-diagnosis-response’ work of motorway control rooms seeking to drained emergent events of

damaging potential (Anderson & Gordon, 2017). They can also be dramatic, as with preemptive drone

strikes (Adey, 2014). Massumi describes this as a shift from biopower/biopolitics towards what he

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terms ‘ontopower’ (2015), signaled by a preoccupation with pre-empting various incipient tendencies

and a reduced concern with optimizing life.

These anticipatory activities are an important element of contemporary human-environment relations,

with numerous sensing activities and technologies making visible and actionable distinct ecological

processes and futures (e.g. Gabrys, 2016). In this context, routine conservation practices are joined by a

more future-oriented ‘crisis conservation’ (Büscher, 2018). This is particularly evident in contemporary

reef conservation faced with rapidly changing ecosystems, or an immanent ‘coral catastrophe’

(Braverman, 2017).

2.6. Social science at sea

“Life in the sea cannot be understood without understanding the sea itself” (Redfield, 1934)

The turbulence of oceanic space complicates a biopolitical preoccupation with spatial containment,

ordering and control over life. A nascent oceanic sensibility in human geography is beginning to

engage with this, and can be crudely divided in to two categories.

One attempts to develop methodological and conceptual movements away from the stasis, borders and

linear framings that have typified geographical concerns with territory and space (e.g. Squire, 2017;

Steinberg & Peters, 2015). This reflects broader shifts in social theory whereby “regional boundaries

and other sharp demarcations no longer have much appeal” (Mol & Law, 2005: 637). Conceptually,

oceanic space provides a means to further engagements with ‘fluid spatialities’ (Mol & Law, 1994) in

more explicitly volumetric terms. Methodologically, scholars have turned in particular to diving in

order to engage with volumes and explore unfamiliar modes of immersion and embodiment (Merchant,

2011a; Picken & Ferguson, 2014; Squire, 2017). These accounts share an enthusiasm for the novelty

and difference of the ocean. Developing volumetric thinking, they nevertheless paint a rather shallow

picture of the ocean itself.

Whilst productively ‘other’ in multiple ways, Bear (2013) warns us against easy references to the

ocean’s alterity as a point of departure. Similar tropes have defined a much longer history of thinking

and writing about the ocean as a frontier, the last wilderness, and comparable framings (e.g. Raban,

1993). Human incursions in to the ocean are such that maintaining these appears problematic. Hence,

the second body of work involves empirical investigation of human relations with oceanic life (Bear,

2013; Bear & Eden, 2008; Boucquey et al., 2016; Cardwell & Thornton, 2015; Gibbs & Warren, 2014).

Bear and Eden (2008), for example, demonstrate the limitations of bounded, territorial imaginations in

fisheries certification. Water and fish are endlessly moving, complicating attempts at spatial

containment. Thus Bear (2013) suggests we attend to the sea as an assemblage, in which the terrestrial

and the oceanic are constantly enfolding, deterritorializing and reterritorializing, defying neat spatial or

conceptual distinctions.

Whilst some geographers are looking to the messy materiality of the ocean for disciplinary renewal, a

globalized ensemble of projects is underway to do away with this messiness, scouring the ocean for

data and value. Geographers have paid little attention to shifting sensibilities in other disciplines and

areas of human activity newly shaping this realm. Research in sociology and anthropology has

progressed further in this regard. Helmreich documents an oceanographic obsession with mapping,

16

knowing and sensing in the name of seeing through ‘the opaque ocean’ (Helmreich, 2009). In a similar

vein, Gabrys (2016) outlines the recent transformation of the oceans into ‘highly-instrumented sensor

spaces’, filled with sensing and monitoring activities. Rather than merely detecting the pre-existent,

such technologies bring the contemporary ocean in to being, “making present and interpretable distinct

types of ecological processes”(29). For example, what was previously considered ‘empty space’ is now

enthusiastically probed by the biotechnology industry for its richness of genetic material with possible

economic value (Helmreich, 2009). New technologies are profoundly influencing what it is possible to

say of the ocean and equally what it means to ‘do oceanography’ in the 21st century (Lehman, 2018),

raising questions regarding “the ways in which meaning is made between humans, machines, and the

ocean” (ibid: 59).

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3. Methodology

As mentioned, I am interested in extending more-than-human geography in a seaward direction through

a focus on governing life on the Great Barrier Reef. In this section, I reflect first upon key

methodological debates in human geography, and then specifically in more-than-human geography. I

follow with an outline and justification of my research methods.

3.1. Methodological debates in human geography

At the heart of recent concerns over disciplinary knowledge production is the relationship between

theory and singularity. Increasingly, geographers are engaging with and contributing to social theory,

thereby defining research theoretically and thematically (Powell et al., 2017). This has, to an extent,

overtaken a commitment to singularity and place-based research, so that “as a discipline, Geography is

increasingly less concerned with the vagaries of actually existing places” (Jazeel in Powell et al.,

2017:97). This is not to say that one or the other is necessarily preferable, indeed place-based research

has a long and troubled history. Rather the danger is that, in exploring theories and themes, ‘the field’

is reduced to its illustrative capacity, or a case reduced to ‘a case of…’, and research unnecessarily

forecloses on the potentiality of the world (e.g. Manning, 2016).

In this context, certain qualitative researchers have suggested doing away with method and its ‘logic of

procedure and extraction’ (Springgay & Truman, 2018). Yet reproducing such definitive distinctions

between theory and singularity, procedure and openness, is not necessarily helpful. Methods do not

have to proceed according to an extractive proceduralism, rather they might come into being as useful

(or not) in correspondences with others (e.g. Ingold, 2015). Moreover, other researchers have aimed to

balance a particular ethic of ‘abiding by’ which takes singularity seriously, with more theoretical

concerns (Phillips, 2010; Powell et al., 2017; Sidaway, 2013). In this vein, I hope to relay an empirical

account which abides by this particular case whilst speaking to concerns in more-than-human and

cultural geographies.

What is at issue in this account is a messy and fluid reality, which could be storied in multiple ways,

and I am keenly aware that mine is a particular and situated translation (e.g. Latour, 1999). Furthermore

it is one infused by my own positionality. Not the least of these is my position as a white, affluent male

entering in to conversation with marine scientists who mostly identify as the same. Also, many nations

lack the scientific expertise or resources to commit to protecting their marine ecosystems in the way

Australians do, and my account is therefore one of a comparatively fortunate conservation situation.

3.2. More-than-human research

Engaging with the more-than-human presents methodological challenges, which have been taken in

different directions across human geography, anthropology, environmental humanities and the broader

qualitative social sciences (Hodgetts & Lorimer, 2015; Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010). As mentioned,

some scholars have critiqued a persistent mismatch between human-centered methods and more-than-

human aspirations (e.g. Buller, 2015) and others have pointed in new directions (e.g. Hodgetts &

Lorimer, 2015).

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The ‘ontological turn’ in the qualitative social sciences has powerfully argued that things are not pre-

given but rather are performed, and emerge in practices (e.g. Mol, 2002; Law, 1999; Latour, 1988).

Hence the ‘reality’ of a thing can be performed differently from practice to practice, place to place:

‘what it is’ can never be exhausted, whilst the ways in which it is performed are consequential (Law,

2002; Mol & Law, 1994). Methodologically, this shifts emphasis towards empirical investigation of the

practices through which objects are performed and come to matter. A key argument here is that

starfish’s lives come to matter and are shaped in Reef management practices. Their lived experience is

inseparable from these practices, which I interrogate through qualitative methods with an admitted

emphasis on the human in human-starfish relations. In the main, therefore, I have learned of starfish in

distal encounters: in scientific papers, symposia, conversations and at research facilities. These

methods, I hope to demonstrate, are still appropriate for recognizing and engaging with the more-than-

human (e.g. Dowling et al., 2016).

3.3 Methods

My fieldwork took place over a month in Queensland. This involved 16 days of participant observation

and archival research at Lizard Island Research Station, event ethnography at two symposia, and 10

expert interviews with crown-of-thorns researchers and managers

3.3.1. Lizard Island

Lizard Island is a high continental island, situated 30 kilometers from the mainland in the far northern

section of the Great Barrier Reef. The island is surrounded by reefs, which connect three islets and

enclose a shallow lagoon. This configuration was appealing for a marine research facility, set up by the

Australian Museum in 1973. An excerpt from the station’s first newsletter reads:

“The first impression is that of the tremendous diversity of corals; in genera alone the fauna is much

richer than that of the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef” (LIRS, 1974)

Over the following years station employees and volunteers converted “a hot, bare, uninhabited and

isolated corner of Lizard Island into a viable and well used marine station” (LIRS, 1977), now four

housing blocks, offices and a library, laboratory and aquaria facilities, SCUBA facilities and several

research boats.

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Figure3:LizardIslandResearchStation.Source:SimonNiklaus

Lizard Island is central to crown-of-thorns starfish knowledge production and management. The

surrounding area is geographically central to what researchers are calling the ‘initiation box’, where

primary starfish outbreaks begin. Over the years crown-of-thorns have altered the reefs around Lizard

Island considerably, and the staff at LIRS are intimately, if adversarially, acquainted with them from

hundreds of hours of surveillance and control. LIRS is also a key field site for crown-of-thorns

research. Grants totalling AUD 500,000 have been awarded through the Australian Museum to crown-

of-thorns researchers over the last four years, and in 2013 an influential management innovation, the

‘single-shot injection’ method, was developed at LIRS.

Participant observation is an approach, rather than a method per se, whereby the researcher positions

themselves as learner and “takes part in the daily activities, rituals, interactions and events of a group of

people” (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2011). Certain scholars have pointed to the contradiction inherent in

participant observation between the engagement of participation and the detachment of observation

(e.g. Bernard, 2006). For Bernard the approach entails immersing oneself whilst also learning to

remove oneself from immersion to intellectualize what one has seen and heard. In my experience

participant observation is not this repetitive sequence of participation followed by thoughtful removal,

rather as the name implies both happen at once and fold in to one another over time. Ingold’s (2014)

description of participant observation as ‘living attentionally with others’ better attends on the one hand

to the need for systematic note-taking and analysis for the approach to be credible and informative. On

the other, ‘living with’ draws attention to the more-than-instrumental nature of the approach, where the

connections made and learning undergone exceed what is presented in the research ‘output’.

Researchers at LIRS typically split their time between aquarium and field research, although this divide

is blurring in the context of climate change, as a recent newsletter explains:

“For the past 10 to 15 years, reef researchers have conducted experiments in aquaria, simulating the

predicted future conditions of warmer and more acidic oceans. Now that those predictions are actually

occurring, they have a real-world 'experiment' to study” (LIRS, 2017)

I was particularly curious about the embodied ways in which scientists ‘learn to be affected’ (Latour,

2004) by various underwater creatures, and negotiate between ‘the aquarium’ and ‘the field’ in a

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changing ocean. I explored these themes in informal conversations, whilst helping to set up laboratory

equipment, by observing experiments, and in informal interviews. The LIRS library is also a rich

source of archival material. I found numerous foundational papers on crown-of-thorns starfish from the

1970s and 80s and more obscure pieces that I would have never have found otherwise. Furthermore,

staff members and researchers were well acquainted with crown-of-thorns researchers and managers,

and their endorsement was important for organizing later interviews.

Lastly, I wanted to apprehend what I could of the crown-of-thorns starfish and its underwater home. I

learnt that starfish leave large feeding scars on corals, and tend to ‘hang out’ in preferred locales, which

Lyle, LIRS’ co-director identified for me on a map. On the basis of this and recent sightings I spent

around an hour each day snorkeling in search of starfish. Fortunately for the Lizard Island corals, the

‘front’ of the starfish outbreak is currently much further south. During outbreaks starfish sightings soar

to around 25 per dive, from a baseline of 1 per roughly 20 dives. So my only interaction with starfish

on Lizard Island was with those in the display tank, which had taken quite some effort to find, and one

of which I buried after it died of starvation.

3.3.2. Event ethnography

I attended two symposia in Cairns and Brisbane. Both nominally concerned with reef conservation,

their topics, themes and tones were quite different. The Great Barrier Reef Restoration Symposium

(henceforth GBRRS) explored the possibilities of “local- or regional-scale intervention, restoration and

management” (GBRRS, 2018). The Coral Reef Futures Symposium (CRFS), on the other hand, was

premised on an assertion that “returning coral reef systems to their former composition is not possible”.

Less concerned with restoring past conditions, speakers explored ways to “navigate the transition to

new ecosystems that will maintain biodiversity, biological functions and support human well-being’

(ARC CoE Coral Reef Studies, 2018).

Symposia present logistical and methodological challenges to ‘traditional’ ethnography, which tends to

involve immersion in a particular place with particular people over extended periods of time (e.g.

Geertz, 1998). By contrast, symposia are short, unite more people than one could hope to speak with,

and often involve multiple concurrent schedules. Nevertheless, such events can be influential for

conservation policy and practice. They are forums through which what conservation is, how it should

be implemented, and who is responsible are articulated and contested (Haas, 2002). Despite their

importance in performing environmental governance, “there has been a surprising lack of ethnographic

attention to ‘the meeting’ as a field site” (Campbell & Brosius, 2010: 247).

Event ethnography is emerging as a useful, more structured variant to better negotiate meetings and

examine the production of environmental governance therein (Campbell & Brosius, 2010; Campbell et

al., 2014; Mahony & Hulme, 2018). This work follows from growing use of ‘institutional ethnography’

to study ‘up’ and open the ‘black box’ of international organisations (e.g. Goldman, 2005; Kuus, 2013).

Of particular interest is how the performative nature of events, their overarching agendas, and situation

in wider governance networks, influence their dynamics and outcomes (Campbell et al., 2014). Others

have further noted the import of a multi-sited approach, which follows themes, ideas and networks

across different events (e.g. Campbell & Brosius, 2010) .

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To guide my observations, talk attendance and note-taking, I prepared key topics and themes of interest

(see appendix C). Doing so, I risked losing the openness and flexibility which animates participant

observation. However the structure proved logistically invaluable for negotiating the symposia and to

be open and attentive where it was most important in the context of my research aims. Additionally, I

have included quotes from several presentations, indicated as (name, event, date), and more

information can be found in appendix B.

3.3.3. Interviews

I undertook ten key informant interviews with crown-of-thorns starfish experts: managers from the

GBRMPA, university researchers and researchers from government-funded institutions (see appendix

A). Two of these were repeats. In accordance with university ethics, participants were provided with an

information sheet and a written consent form before interviews. They appear anonymized in this

dissertation, referred to through their institutional affiliation.

Expert interviews can be helpful for obtaining authoritative information on substantive topics, often

used as a means to grasp more tacit aspects of institutional logics and organization (e.g. Yanow, 2011).

They can be one-off meetings, relatively formal, structured and carried out at the institution in question.

This format derives from practical necessity as much as from the benefits it can yield. Questions of

access, scheduling, institutional context and so on can shape interviews, such that they can be highly

scripted and formulaic, resulting in little change to one’s terms of reference (Kuus, 2013).

‘Who is there to help you but the person who is answering your questions?’ (McPhee, 2014)

For Foucault (Foucault, 1998:381), interviews depend on a game, “at once pleasant and difficult”, of

using only the rights afforded by the other and by the accepted form of dialogue in context. Accepting

this, expert interviews can be appropriately formal, whilst also a rich social interaction which pivots on

individual personalities and building rapport through responsiveness and engagement. As Kuus

reminds us, “If the researcher does not make a concerted effort to engage the interviewee, it is not an

un-intensive interview but a bad interview” (2013: 57 emphasis added).

Most of my interviews took place sat down over food and coffee in symposium intervals. Generally, I

arranged in advance to meet interviewees at the symposium rather than at a specific time. This avoided

bounding and formalizing ‘the interview’ as a specific event, and ensured I interviewed people after

their talks, so that I could alter the questions I had prepared as needed. Some questions I asked

everyone (see appendix D), whilst most were more specific and based on background research of the

interviewee’s work.

Recent social scientific attempts to ‘enrich the interview’ (Dowling et al., 2016) have emphasized the

importance of setting, and supplemented the ‘blandscapes’ (Edensor, 2007) of sedentary interviews

with, for example, movement. ‘Interviews on the move’, or ‘go along’ methods, are increasingly used

to explore the spatialities of social life and reflect upon the importance of embodiment (Evans & Jones,

2011). One meeting at AIMS involved a seated interview, followed by a walking interview around the

researcher’s experiments and the Institute’s National Sea Simulator, “the most advanced research

aquarium in the world” (AIMS, 2018c) and a wrap up discussion. On our walk we met lab technicians

and researchers helping with his projects and removed a starfish from its aquarium with a dustpan so

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that I could touch it. I learned of where my interviewee’s experiments were faltering, where funding

had directed him, and how he felt about his work and others’. This telling-showing-discussing process

helped me grasp how political processes, funding streams, personal agendas and nonhuman agencies

in/of the laboratory overlap and interact to shape what gets done.

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4. Analysis 4.1. The Great Barrier Reef as an aquarium

In Commodity fiction and cod fishing, Gísli Pálsson suggests that to think of the contemporary ocean

and the human activities shaping it, and still describe it as boundless, “really does not make much

sense” (1998:279). Instead, he suggests, “It would be far more appropriate to speak of an aquarium”

(ibid). Three elements of aquaria are particularly important in Pálsson’s account. First, aquaria are

designed, constructed and managed for human purposes, their goings-on are fostered and sustained to

service a particular requirement. Second, they owe their construction to a particular fascination with

underwater life. Lastly, aquaria “may be difficult to administer at times and the results are not

necessarily along the lines envisaged by those in charge, but it is generally assumed that things are

‘under control’” (279). The aquarium, then, discloses a knowable, manageable ocean space, where

“marine scientists habitually present ecosystems as predictable, domesticated domains, despite the

uncertainties involved” (ibid).

Aside from the goldfish-dominated assemblages that immediately come to mind, coral reef ecosystems

are perhaps easiest to think of in aquarium terms. The GBR particularly so as its economic value

derives mostly from tourism, and extractive uses are now, relative to reefs elsewhere, quite limited. If

the oceans are commonly figured as a space to be crossed, or an opaque depth of resources (e.g. Bear,

2013), reefs derive much contemporary appeal from a desire to ‘look in’, to see and experience

charismatic nonhuman forms. Moreover, reefs are subject to a great deal of scientific attention,

developed through the latter half of the twentieth century (Sapp, 1999). Since the 1990s, monitoring

and modeling have become crucial ways to know and relate to reefs, part of a broader oceanographic

project of “seeing through the opaque ocean”(Helmreich, 2009:38). In this sense of the aquarium, reefs

are amongst the best ‘known’ and most ‘visible’ of marine ecosystems.

4.1.1. The ‘big blue’ asserts an unwillingness to cooperate

For a time it seemed things on the GBR were indeed under control. The rezoning of the marine park to

include a much greater area of no-take (green) zones, completed in 2004, was considered exemplary of

best practice, and an ambitious step towards better management and strengthening resilience (Morrison,

2017; Olsson et al., 2008). It signaled a move from maximizing yield of commercially important fish

species towards ‘protecting biodiversity and maintaining ecosystem function’ and ‘stewardship of the

larger-scale seascape’ (Olsson et al., 2008:9491,9489). This ‘whole GBR’ vision of the aquarium was

characterized by a focus on reef health, ecosystemic integrity, and zoning-based insulation from the

threats of a changing world ocean.

Yet, following recent media coverage, one might wonder whether things are under control. The

abnormally high ocean temperatures behind the 2016 and 2017 mass bleaching events resulted in

extensive coral death over two thirds of the length of the GBR (Hughes, Kerry, & Simpson, 2018). For

Law, any enactment of objects, like ‘the Great Barrier Reef’ means “spatial relations are also being

enacted at the same time” (Law, 2002). Zoning and the particular spatial relations it enacts appears

unable to fully account for the moving, folding and blurring of boundaries (Mol & Law, 2005) in a

turbulent ocean. This is not to say that these boundaries are inconsequential, zoning has very material

effects on coral reef assemblages, even if the mechanisms at work are not fully understood. Instead,

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these boundaries are frustrated and undone even as they prove consequential (Bear, 2013; Steinberg &

Peters, 2015).

Thus, whilst recognizing zoning and related management actions as important, more seemed necessary

to bring the GBR under control (Hoegh-Guldberg, 1999; Hughes et al., 2003; Pandolfi et al., 2003).

Researchers argued the Reef had to be understood as situated within the global ocean, such that global

action on climate change seemed key to securing its future (Hughes et al., 2015). Unlike in Pálsson’s

aquarium, control in this turbulent ocean is no longer about a specific species (cod) nor a discrete

human activity (fishing), rather it comes to encompass a far more distributed, diverse set of practices

not directly related to, nor concerned with, the Reef.

4.1.2. Coral reefs in the Anthropocene

As I have suggested, Reef scientists and managers increasingly recognize the current situation in terms

of the Anthropocene (Birkeland, 2015; Hughes et al., 2017b; Norström et al., 2016). The significant

implication being a rupture from the past (e.g. Hamilton, 2016), taken to suggest that “returning reefs to

past configurations is no longer an option” (Hughes et al., 2017:82). If the aquarium names a certain

knowable normality, then the Anthropocene ocean suggests that, as Anderson says of ‘endemic’

emergencies, “there is not a stable normality, a non-emergency time, to be returned to” (2017:472). The

basic premise is that things are not under control.

Faced with this daunting situation, I suggest an affective condition of urgency has suffused the GBR

conservation community. The deteriorating condition of the Reef has become a common mode of

relating to it in general, where the future of the Reef gains foremost significance. Urgency appears as a

particular orientation towards this future, which conditions how the Reef is acted for/on in the present.

Two polar responses to the Anthropocene can be identified in recent accounts elsewhere. An ‘ethics

first’ approach explores new modes of being and acting in a changing world, and a ‘management first’

orientation advocates for intensified techno-managerialism guided by solutions-focused, science-led

approaches (Lorimer, 2017b; Lövbrand et al., 2009; Swyngedouw & Ernstson, 2018).

‘Management first’ is gaining a strong foothold in the GBR conservation community. Previously, a

manager at the GBRMPA explained to me, the dominant management logic was “it’s a world heritage

site, leave it alone” (interview, 18/7/2018). We see this expressed in the 2004 rezoning, which

attempted to reduce human interventions in the marine park. Now the Anthropocene is taken to suggest

that ‘leave it alone’ is no longer realistic, as the whole system appears altered. This has brought forth a

new logic: “Maintaining the Reef in to the future requires actions and interventions, in addition to a

commitment to greenhouse gas mitigation and continued management of local pressures” (AIMS,

2018d).

In common with other technical, managerial responses to the Anthropocene, I suggest a key concern

here is on maintaining, or orchestrating a return to, accommodating conditions (e.g. Steffen et al.,

2015). These conditions are what I have referred to as the aquarium. However, it is important to clarify

that these interventions are only in development. They are emerging now precisely because anticipating

a threatening future appears necessary. As AIMS researcher Line Bay asks and answers “Are we really

at that stage where active intervention is the only option? My answer is no…but we are living in a

warming future and the time to start the research is now” (GBRRS, 16/7/2018).

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4.1.3. Reef Restoration and Adaptation

The Great Barrier Reef Restoration Symposium I attended was the first forum of its kind for discussing

the possibility and practicability of all manner of interventions from cloud brightening to pumping cool

water over reefs and the engineering and aquaculture of heat-tolerant corals. Three short vignettes

might help explain what is currently going on.

1. Wendy Morris, a ‘tourism expert’, has recently been appointed to the GBR Foundation’s expert

committee to, in her words, “advise them on what to do with all that money” from the Turnbull

Government. Beginning with a slide titled ‘Science is society’s lens to understanding the real world’,

she continued:

“the GBR is a shining light of best practice, a magnet of hope. The greatest single challenge we face is

to get past the statement from Europe and the USA that the Reef is dead…It is in the Reef’s interest for

us all to tell the whole story, the GBR is in the global spotlight and a lay audience needs to understand

your findings within the context of the whole of the Reef…Our problems are global and we are acting

locally” (Wendy Morris, 16/7/2018).

2. Frank Mars, founder of the large multinational corporation Mars Inc., presented on the company’s

Coral Reef Rehabilitation Project in Indonesia. In many of the talks he had listened to, he explained, he

had repeatedly heard a ‘practical, scalable, affordable mantra’. He qualified that his project, which

plants corals mounted on metal frames on to the sea floor, was definitely not scalable. However, this

was not necessarily a problem: “How many hectares of the GBR have people in the water every day?

It’s certainly no more than 50, and you have a huge economy based just on that. We’re not talking

about ‘the Great Barrier Reef’ here, so it doesn’t need to be scalable.” (16/7/2018).

3. The symposium concluded with a forum for expressing hopes, concerns and reservations in light of

the event. For the chair of the forum, the key was to focus on ‘the positives of repair, not the negatives

of despair’, “restoration is a pivotal point for starting to think in terms of positives, of methods for

fixing problems rather than focusing on the behaviors that have led to those problems” (Chris Gillies,

18/7/2018). For the CEO of AIMS the crucial message was “it’s all about a plurality of approaches

and the need to work together, this can’t be a free-for-all with everyone individually pursuing their

great shiny ideas. That simply won’t work. The problem of failing with restoration is we don’t have a

lot of time, so decision making approaches will be key to making sure we don’t fail big” (Paul Hardisty,

18/7/2018).

These illustrate several points. Firstly, that the Australian Government, faced with national and

international pressure to act, is investing in interventionist measures (rather than in emissions

reductions). A great deal of new activity is stemming from this funding. The Reef Restoration and

Adaptation Program (RRAP), coordinated by AIMS, was established earlier in 2018 with AUD 6

million for the concept feasibility phase, which will inform spending of a further AUD 100 million

allocated through the GBR Foundation. Given the direction of funding towards restoration and

adaptation, securing the future of the Reef is increasingly figured in terms of ‘fixing problems’, and as

a series of engineering challenges. Thus the future Reef is likely to be made as much as maintained.

Secondly, there is a perceived need for plurality driven by a common purpose. Many of the actions

proposed will not be feasible for the whole GBR, such that actors coordinating the RRAP advocate

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plural approaches ‘stacked up in such a way as to actually achieve success’ (Ken Anthony, GBRRS,

16/7/2018). In similar settings, scholars have noted a tendency under conditions of urgency to forego

due political process and to make very particular decisions (Lorimer, 2017b; Swyngedouw & Ernstson,

2018). Here, this appears as a commitment to prioritization and optimization. In advance of a

threatening future, prioritization designates those activities aiming to identify what will be worth trying

to save, specifically in terms of ecological functions and human values (AIMS, 2018d). Embedded

herein is a particular biopolitical logic: deciding what to save inevitably leaves an outside to “contend

with less livable conditions” (Braverman, 2015:228). Optimization refers to improving upon existing

knowledge, for it to be more appropriate to the new anthropocenic premise (e.g. Line Bay, GBRRS,

16/7/2018). Together these perform the affective condition of urgency. The actionable interval between

the present and the threatening future appears limited, promoting an acceleration captured by the

phrase: “we don’t need to wait until we completely understand to take action” (Peter Mumby, CRFS,

19/7/2018). Scenario planning and decision-making approaches are presented as key for ordering this

acceleration. These attempt to disclose various futures and narrow the field of what to save and how to

intervene, concretizing particular priorities and foreclosing on others (see McCormack & Schwanen,

2011).

Thirdly, this raises questions regarding whose priorities and opinions are likely to count. A recent

valuation of the Reef, commissioned by the GBR Foundation, estimated its worth at $56 billion and its

contribution to the Australian economy at $5.7 billion from tourism alone in 2015-2016 (Deloitte

Access Economics, 2017). Hence what is being maintained in to the future is at once ‘the Reef’, and a

hugely lucrative tourism industry. Frank Mars’ case is one of several examples of a broader “ever

closer entwining of conservation and corporate capitalism” (Brockington, 2009:2), with a

characteristically elite flavor, focus on mediagenic conservation projects and ‘lively commodities’.

Lively commodities here refer to things whose “value derives from their status as living beings”

(Collard & Dempsey, 2013:2684). In this context restoration and adaptation activities also function as

reactions to ‘reef obituaries’ with examples of action, success and liveliness to encourage continued

tourism. Thus when Wendy Morris argues for what is ‘in the Reef’s interest’, or what is good for the

Reef, we see that this is a performance of a particular position regarding what the Reef is good for.

Whilst frequently referred to together, the Reef and the Reef-as-lively-commodity are not coterminous.

In many critical accounts of the commodification of nonhuman life (Brockington, 2009; Büscher et al.,

2012; Collard & Dempsey, 2013), we see life reconfigured in the image of the commodity. Here this

raises the questions: how much of the Reef actually needs to remain alive? And in this context which

projects are likely to be prioritized? The aquarium-like configuration of the whole Reef system may be

irredeemable, but it could possibly be maintained over the small area relevant to the tourism industry.

Thus when Malcolm Turnbull stands in front of an aquarium and professes to be protecting the Reef for

the jobs it provides (Turnbull Government, 2018), what he is referring to is indeed more like the

aquarium than the whole Reef: small pockets of ocean managed in perpetuity.

We can understand all this activity in Foucault’s terms as an apparatus: a “a kind of formation…that at

a given historical moment has as its major function the response to an urgency” (Foucault, 1980:194

emphasis added), via “a certain manipulation of relations of forces, either developing them in a

particular direction, blocking them, stabilizing them, utilizing them etc.” (ibid:196). As a rather loose

formation, what gets done here is not the outcome of a shared vision of successful conservation under

27

the new anthropocenic premise. Rather, what I argue is happening is a series of negotiations between

aquarium-making projects which figure the object of management (‘the Reef’) and the mechanisms to

achieve control in different, even divergent ways. Interventionist approaches are also only one element

of these projects, which also include calls for emissions reductions and management of local pressures.

Nevertheless, a desire to do something now over arriving at a ‘best’ solution later, and the Reef-as-

lively-commodity, will likely figure prominently in these negotiations.

4.2. Crown-of-Thorns Starfish Control

Figure4:Manualcontrolofstarfish.Source:TravelNQ

One of the decisions taken under this affective condition of urgency has been to intensify crown-of-

thorns starfish control. Crown-of-thorns control is now the most established management intervention

on the Reef, presenting an opportunity to interrogate practices when management appears increasingly

urgent. In this section, I indicate the shifting contexts producing starfish as controllable, and examine

the dominant technique by which they are controlled.

4.2.1. Producing starfish as controllable

As mentioned, three starfish outbreaks have been recorded on the GBR since the 1960s and a fourth is

ongoing. Minimal action was taken against the first three outbreaks, on the premise that starfish

outbreaks might have been an important natural process and were too widespread to affordably control.

However, in this most recent outbreak, starfish have emerged definitively as object-targets of control,

considered necessary “if we are to maintain reefs and their resilience in to the future” (Westcott et al.,

2016:2).

What explains this shift? As the future of the GBR emerged as a pressing concern, quantifying the

threats facing the Reef and prioritizing management actions became crucial. The AIMS Long-term

Monitoring Program, initially conceived to monitor crown-of-thorns populations, was by 2012 “the

longest continuous record of change in reef communities over such a large geographic area” (AIMS,

2018b). Based on data from 2258 surveys from 214 reefs over 27 years, researchers at AIMS

demonstrated that over that time coral cover on the GBR had reduced by 50.7 per cent (De’ath et al.,

2012). Starfish predation was shown to account for 42 percent of total coral loss and over this time, the

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authors suggested, coral cover would actually have increased without predation. Without intervention

they suggested coral cover could fall to below 10 per cent by 2022 (De’ath et al., 2012).

“it’s because we’ve done all this damage and disturbance to the reef system as a whole that these

crown-of-thorns outbreaks now cause so much damage…so it doesn’t matter whether they’re

anthropogenic or natural, there’s still good reason to stop them for the benefit of the Reef” (JCU

researcher, interview, 24/7/2018)

Previously crown-of-thorns were akin to what Crowley et al. (2017) call ‘nonhuman citizens on trial’,

tolerated at the system level according to a particular ‘politics of belonging’ (Lavau, 2011), premised

on naturalness. The Anthropocene Reef, altered at the whole-system level, rendered the

natural/unnatural debate less tenable and recalibrated these conditions for belonging.

“Nothing in this world is certain except death and taxes, and COTS outbreaks on the GBR” (AIMS

researcher, interview, 23/7/2018).

Hence, producing starfish as controllable has a dual meaning. As in Wanderer’s (2015) account of pests

on Guadalupe, starfish are first illuminated as object-targets of control by a shifting context of

conditions and priorities. Whereas the ‘malicious demon’ (Ewald, 2002) of climate change “is a

somewhat vague spectral presence that cannot be easily discerned” (Anderson, 2010:779), here was

something actually resembling a malicious demon and which had long been treated as such in popular

accounts. Perhaps ironically, there is a reassuring certainty to crown-of-thorns outbreaks, they are at

least there to control. As one researcher argued “we can’t rebuild the resilience of the reef as easily as

we can just go out there and kill crown-of-thorns” (JCU researcher, interview, 24/7/2018). Thus the

second meaning lies in actual attempts at control.

In what follows I document crown-of-thorns control as an ensemble of reactive and anticipatory actions

in relation to starfish outbreaks, but in relation to broader Reef management, control is all about

anticipation. This is likened to ‘first aid’, and positioned as an essential precursor to other aquarium-

making projects, or to “allow us to have something left to save from climate change in the future”

(David Westcott, GBRRS, 17/7/2018). Implicit is that the spatial footprint of successful crown-of-

thorns control is the future Reef, or what there will be left for other interventions ‘to save’. As one

researcher wryly commented: “you can try and produce super corals that recover from heat stress, but

they still won’t recover from being eaten” (AIMS researcher, interview, 23/7/2018).

4.2.2. The Pest

It requires significant practical effort to produce crown-of-thorns starfish as amenable to control. The

figure appropriate to this project is the pest. The pest, rather than the enigmatic, nightmarish starfish of

the past, is a more familiar and manageable creature. Pests damage or interfere with (usually

economically) valued life in domestic, agricultural and conservation settings, and their designation as

such usually entails a management response (CSIRO, 2018; University of California, 2018).

In short, the pest is proper to the aquarium, indicating both the importance of the Reef-as-lively-

commodity and a particular logic of prioritization in anthropocenic Reef management. Several

researchers likened this situation to locusts in agriculture:

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“Nowadays reefs have such high economic value that it’s become a numbers game of keeping the

numbers down below an acceptable level, and acceptable now means economically acceptable. They’re

like the locusts of coral reefs, biologically they’re an outbreak species and if they start destroying a

farmer’s crops you’re going to do something about them” (AIMS researcher, interview, 23/7/2018).

David Westcott, speaking at the GBR Restoration Symposium, exemplifies precisely this logic:

“A lot of people say manual control is really expensive, and yeah it costs a lot of money but it’s a

piddling amount when you think about the value of the GBR…If you wanna (sic) own a Rolls Royce

tourist attraction, then you need to be willing to invest at Rolls Royce levels to maintain that particular

asset” (17/7/2018).

4.2.3. Integrated Pest Management

Prior to 2012 crown-of-thorns control was patchy and poorly coordinated. One researcher described

this as “people going out there, swimming around and stabbing the bejeezus (sic) out of them”

(Sheriden Morris, GBRRS, 16/7/2018). Control was a time-consuming process of manually removing

starfish from the reef matrix, and injecting them up to 30 times with sodium bisulphate. The first major

progression resulted from trials on the large outbreak population at Lizard Island. Using bile salts

instead of sodium bisulphate, researchers developed a much more efficient ‘single-injection method’

(Rivera-Posada et al., 2013), which increased the number of starfish divers could kill per dive.

Nevertheless, this was still not the kind of control appropriate to the threat at hand. It was understood

that a framework would be needed, which resulted in the appropriation of a concept from agriculture:

Integrated Pest Management (IPM).

IPM is an ecologically-informed approach, rather than a single technique, which can include biological,

pheromone and chemical control, traps, barriers and tolerance of non-economic damage, applied in a

strategic, systematic manner (CSIRO, 2018; Westcott et al., 2016). This is organized here through a

primary focus on optimizing existing manual control techniques and expanding their coverage and

effect, and a secondary focus on developing alternative control strategies and establishing the route

cause(s) of outbreaks (Westcott et al., 2016).

Optimizing manual control involves focusing on effectiveness and efficiency. Elsewhere, these have

been described as key business and managerial principles, applied increasingly in conservation settings

as they become more neoliberal-oriented (Büscher et al., 2012; Osborne & Gaebler, 1992; Turnhout et

al., 2014).

Control under IPM both intervenes in the lives of individual starfish, and in the spacetimes of an

outbreak. By the latter I mean the distinctive spatial-temporal footprint of outbreak cycles, which

initiate in the northern GBR at roughly 15 year intervals, then propagate southward over successive

spawning seasons as ocean currents transport suspended larvae. Manual control, having evolved within

the spacetimes of one outbreak, is primarily a series of reactions within a reality where “The scale of

the COTS problem threatens to dwarf the resources available to combat it” (Fletcher & Westcott, 2018:

n.p.). Ultimately, this requires delineating a ‘problem’ (the pest) from the ‘population’, because “we’re

not silly enough to think we can kill them all” (David Wachenfeld, CRFS, 19/7/2018). This could best

be described as a particular mode of (bio)security: “a set of apparatuses that aim to regulate within

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reality, because the field of intervention…perpetually escape(s) command” (Anderson, 2012: 34,

emphasis added).

4.2.4. When is a crown-of-thorns starfish a pest?

The most targeted pest is that which elicits the strongest reaction: visually-identifiable adult starfish

present in large aggregations at valued sites. Between 2012 and 2015, when the control program was

independently run by tourism operators, control teams became adept at controlling these starfish. With

the new single injection method, diver teams could quickly kill all the visible starfish, and with none in

sight, could claim a 100 per cent success rate. However, this had minimal impact on disappearing coral

cover, which several interviewees explained was because “it wasn’t based on science at all” (AIMS

researcher, interview, 17/7/2018). Teams were quietly surprised when reefs they thought were ‘under

control’ were quickly repopulated by starfish. Where were they coming from? Perhaps they were

moving between reefs en masse, which was suggested in early studies (Pearson & Endean, 1969).

Contra the grain of wider coral reef science, most of what scientists know of crown-of-thorns comes

from laboratory studies, because they are “really bloody hard to work with” (JCU researcher,

interview, 24/7/2018). Thus researchers have often inferred what starfish might do on the Reef on the

basis of laboratory studies. From these, researchers have an indication of the speed starfish can move

at, and the distances they could move (Pratchett, Cowan, et al., 2017). Whether they actually do move

periodically between reefs is contested, as their extremely plastic bodies routinely shed all manner of

tags researchers have tried to affix, making their movements hard to ascertain. For one researcher,

control teams were evidently confusing mobility with crypticity, or starfish’s tendency to hide in the

reef matrix: “they’re not killing all the starfish and then more are walking in from surrounding reefs,

they don’t do that… they’re just not finding them all” (JCU researcher, interview, 24/7/2018).

Figure5:Acrown-of-thornsstarfishatAIMS.Source:Author

To overcome the starfish’s capacities to evade detection, managers have developed revisitation

schedules. Teams now “go to a reef and ‘pew pew’ (sic) get all the ones you can see, come back a

week later and do the same, then again a week later, rather than waste time trying to find all the hidden

ones” (AIMS researcher, interview, 23/7/2018). This expands upon the narrowly-defined pest in

previous control efforts and introduces a new metric of success: the ecologically sustainable threshold

of three starfish per hectare (Rogers et al., 2017). This is both a measure of how many starfish there

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are, and an attempt to limit the number of starfish there will be at other sites in the future of an

outbreak. Crown-of-thorns starfish are incredibly fecund, producing massive quantities of gametes (e.g.

Uthicke et al., 2015). During spawning, starfish come together in aggregations to improve their

reproductive success, as more gametes mix in the water. Even at low densities where starfish might not

be considered a pest, their reproductive success in aggregations is so high that it can propagate an

outbreak. Individual-based simulation modeling has indicated that below three starfish per hectare

“even if they aggregate, their reproductive capacity is really pretty low” (UQ researcher, interview,

17/7/2018). Knowing whether densities are below this threshold is challenging, thus it translates to

‘zero starfish encountered’ after several visits.

4.2.5. Prioritization and strategy

At this juncture control teams appear able to overcome the evasive and reproductive capacities of the

starfish at individual sites, however in isolation this is insignificant. Covering multiple sites requires a

system of prioritization. Recent whole-system connectivity modelling (Hock et al., 2017) renders

visible and actionable the quiet agency of ocean currents in propagating crown-of-thorns outbreaks,

simulating hydrodynamic links between reefs. By identifying starfish source and sink reefs, this seeks

to direct control to where it will have the greatest effect in tandem with the turbulent forces of the

ocean. However, when I asked a GBRMPA manager whether this indicated a shift towards systemic

control, he responded: “Mmm… yeah look it is to an extent. The fact is there’s a whole load of reefs

we’ve never looked at and we’re never gonna (sic) look at” (interview, 18/7/2018). If economically-

valuable reefs overlapped with important source reefs, “that’s where I’m sending the boats” (ibid).

These reefs become priority sites, of which there are currently 57 (Cameron, 2018). Priority reefs

designated, decision-making tools are used to develop a strategy. The COTS Control Centre, a “tablet-

based, ecologically-informed, on-water decision support system” (Fletcher & Westcott, 2018: n.p.) uses

data from culling, surveillance, and connectivity models. Based on this, it builds a strategy (see figures

5 & 6) “in order to achieve the greatest improvement in coral health and resilience on the GBR”

(Fletcher & Westcott, 2018: n.p.).

Figure6:Decision-making.Source:Author/CSIRO

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Figure7:Managementmodel.Source:CSIRO

The aim is to drop divers in the water where there are the most starfish, and where controlling them

will have the greatest effect, referred to as divers getting ‘the best bang for their buck’ (e.g. David

Westcott, GBRRS, 17/7/2018). The hope is that when the control program expands to eight vessels at

the end of 2018, this system will allow covering more priority reefs along the length of the GBR in an

effective, efficient way (GBRMPA manager, interview, 18/7/2018).

4.2.6. Effective and efficient?

Certain key actors are, off record, sceptical about the potential for this strategy to meaningfully impact

the current outbreak. Because manual control is foremost a reaction to an established outbreak and to

starfish already legible as pests, such that“by the time we’re at our peak of funding, there’s really very

low coral cover…and its certainly too late to do anything about it” (Russ Babcock, GBRRS,

17/7/2018).

Figure8:Visualizationofcoral/COTS/fundingcycles.Source:CSIRO

This is evident in past outbreaks but most obviously here: the recent AUD 82.8 million of government

funding has come over 5 years in to this outbreak. Much like tending to an aquarium, this prioritizes the

most visually obvious damage in the present, on the reefs most often seen by people between Cairns

and Townsville. Reactive manual control, then, seems precisely the kind of intervention expected of

urgent Reef management: prioritizing present action over a ‘best’ solution later, and economically-

valuable sites over others.

Considering outbreak dynamics, this approach is neither effective nor efficient. Control is happening

after the point at which it becomes most difficult: right when the outbreak first starts. After that, the

starfish’s exceptional reproductive capacity and Reef hydrodynamics ensure there will be too many

starfish across too many reefs to effectively control. There is a sense of fatalism to this situation, which

one paper likens to ‘a Sisyphean task’ (Uthicke et al., 2015).

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4.3. Alternative control logics

A different spatial-temporal logic is emerging as an alternative to reactive manual control, evident in

three projects in development under IPM: the early warning system, zoning, and triton snail

reintroductions. Shared between these projects is a particular logic which seeks to hone in on where

outbreaks begin, and create unfavourable conditions to prevent initiation.

4.3.1. The early warning system

Early warning systems are characteristic of a mode of contemporary government which attempts to

know and act upon future threats, like terrorism, climate change and epidemics, in the present

(Anderson, 2010; Lakoff & Collier, 2008; Massumi, 2009). They indicate where and when a threat may

be immanent, to initiate preparedness planning and anticipatory action. Here this involves several

activities aiming to anticipate an outbreak pre-initiation, through intensive, continuous monitoring (e.g.

Pratchett, Caballes, et al., 2017). Previously, interest in starfish has waned between outbreaks as they

are not overtly causing damage, leaving control in a cycle of reaction. Now the control program is

better financed, it is hoped effort can be maintained between outbreaks, so decisive action can be taken

before the next outbreak initiates.

For Anderson, anticipatory action targets “processes of emergence which may become determinate

threats” (2012: 34), but how to act on these processes? As a GBRMPA manager explained, “There’s a

reason we go after the adult ones” (interview, 18/7/2018). Diagnosing and acting within an outbreak is

relatively straightforward: one can see lots of large adult starfish. How to sense an outbreak before it is

obviously there? We need to ask of the early warning system: “How is the future being related to, how

are futures known and rendered actionable to thereafter be acted upon…?” (Anderson, 2010:778).

Firstly, the future may not be especially indeterminate. It likely has a particular spatial-temporal form

which can be discerned from past evidence, monitoring and modelling. There has long been evidence

that outbreaks begin in an area of the northern GBR (Lassig, 1992), likely near Lizard Island (Pratchett,

Caballes, et al., 2017). In this area, known as the ‘initiation box’, limited water movement and a high

density of individual reefs allow a slow build-up of starfish, until densities and conditions are such that

a spawning event results in an overflow of larvae southwards, and thus an outbreak begins (Hock et al.,

2014; Pratchett et al., 2017). In addition, previous outbreaks have exhibited a fifteen-year cyclic

pattern, so the future that is acted upon is presumed to be around 2025.

Figure9:Outbreaktemporalities.Source:AIMS

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Moreover, the future outbreak is already there long before it is recognizable as such. Outbreak densities

of juvenile starfish and slowly building adult densities might exist for years before an outbreak is

diagnosed. Given the significance of these starfish, essentially the embodiment of a future outbreak,

certain researchers suggest they should matter much more to control efforts: “the way I’ve been saying

it is you kill one starfish at Lizard Island, it’s probably the equivalent of about 10,000 in the Swains

(southern GBR). It’s a lot of effort but it’s worth that effort, it’ll stop the next one” (JCU researcher,

interview, 24/7/2018). However, diverting management attention away from the front of an outbreak,

where starfish are most obviously pests under the reactive control logic, is difficult. Especially so

because where to look is uncertain: the boundaries of the initiation box are contested and the decisive

area likely differs between outbreaks. Juvenile starfish and adults at low densities are also more cryptic,

offering little visual indication of an immanent outbreak.

Overcoming these obstacles seems to hinge on automation. Rendering immanent outbreaks sense-able

requires extra-human sensory capacities, attainable through remote sensing. Researchers at AIMS are

developing environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques to sense starfish presence using a genetic marker

which identifies their DNA in water samples (Uthicke et al., 2015; Uthicke et al., 2018). Work is

underway to develop autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with integrated automated sampling

devices (Sven Uthicke, GBRRS, 17/7/2018). These vehicles could continuously patrol the initiation

box and locate starfish before they can be recognized by human surveillance.

Managers are unsure what this means in practice, wondering “how am I getting boats out there on the

water to manage those juvenile starfish?” (GBRMPA manager, interview, 18/7/2018). However,

researchers suggested the system was not actually about controlling juveniles, rather encouraging a

shift in sensibility: “people have short attention spans…we need a way to prove to management and

funding agencies that we have elevated numbers of starfish long before they get to the adult phase and

start eating corals” (JCU researcher, interview, 24/7/2018).

4.3.2. ‘Natural’ control

IPM as applied to crown-of-thorns starfish is unusual in emphasizing chemical control. In other IPM

cases, chemical control is often a ‘last resort’ after ‘natural’ approaches (CSIRO, 2018). Thus part of

the IPM investment is directed towards developing more natural pest-control methods. Two of these

projects are rearing and releasing giant triton snails, and rezoning to encourage fish predation.

The crucial difference between these two approaches and the focus on manual control is one of

absence/presence. For Lorimer, this is a distinguishing difference between what he refers to as

probiotic and antibiotic environmentalities (2017a). Under the more antibiotic orientation of manual

control, the excessive or soon-to-be-excessive presence of crown-of-thorns starfish is acted upon

through a coordinated strategy of lethal injections. Here the shared concern is with filling absences to

reinvigorate a dysfunctional ecology, identified as common to probiotic environmentalities (Lorimer,

2017a).

This reflects two shifts. The first is towards enlarging the space for natural processes in crown-of-

thorns control. Braun suggests the arrival of the Anthropocene has prompted a (re)discovery of the

‘naturalness of nature’ as a mode of governing (2014). Working with nature appears as an antidote to

immunitary modernist techniques, “such that nature’s diversity provides the ‘service’ of cancelling out

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the very risks that nature itself presents” (ibid: 59). However, as I have suggested of current Reef

management logics, the naturalness of nature tends to be figured as insufficient to correct such an

altered system. Thus in both of these cases, ‘working with’ hybridizes with more interventionist modes.

Second is a shift in thinking about predator-prey relations in ecology, which suggests predators have

greater effects on ecologies than simple consumption. The risk of predation can be equally influential

in structuring ecosystems by stimulating costly defensive strategies in prey animals, thus creating an

‘ecology of fear’ (e.g. Ripple & Beschta, 2004). These ‘trait-mediated indirect effects’ are likened to

being ‘scared to death’ (Preisser, Bolnick, & Benard, 2005).

4.3.3. Giant triton snails

Giant triton snails (tritons) are a very large marine snail. They move slowly and randomly around a

reef, sweeping their tentacles around until they smell prey, when they speed up towards it and engulf it

(Hall, Motti, & Kroon, 2017). In early studies, tritons were established as a predator of crown-of-thorns

starfish but were by that point rare from shell collection (Copland, 1966). Suggestions to breed and

release tritons were ridiculed, however, as they seemed to eat only two or three starfish a week. Given

the extent of outbreaks, it seemed unlikely that reintroducing them would have any impact at all (Ford,

1989).

Figure10:Atritonengulfsastarfish.Source:AIMS

More recently, evidence of the importance of trait-mediated interactions indicates tritons have

significant effects on crown-of-thorns populations beyond consumption. Laboratory studies have

shown that when crown-of-thorns starfish sense an approaching triton, “they run a mile” (AIMS

researcher, interview, 23/7/2018). Those working on the triton program hope tritons might generate a

‘fearscape’, sending starfish in to ‘panic mode’ to discourage the formation of pre-spawning

aggregations (Hall, Motti, et al., 2017). There are similarities here with, for example, rewilding with

wolves: tritons are valued for their potential role in generating desired processes and flows However,

whilst wolves are imagined as ‘ecological engineers’ (Lorimer, 2017a), tritons’ role is much more

specific, and in keeping with the securitized language of crown-of-thorns control they are imagined

more as ecological soldiers.

Yet, enlisting tritons as a form of ‘nonhuman labour’ (Barua, 2017) in the control program looks to be a

frustrating affair. No one has successfully reared tritons in captivity. Researchers have bred tritons and

36

incubated eggs to the planktonic larval phase. These larvae live at AIMS in small, cup-shaped aquaria,

where researchers have watched them persist, unchanging, for over 300 days (interview, 23/7/2018).

Evidence from other triton species suggests they have much more watching to do: larvae may remain in

this phase for up to four and a half years (Hall, Motti, et al., 2017), the longest planktonic phase of any

marine invertebrates. It is thought particular chemical factors will induce them to settle and develop,

but I listened as laboratory technicians joked that it was impossible, nothing had worked.

If rearing is successful, it will likely be too time- and cost-intensive to rear very many tritons. So their

role is envisaged as what researchers call a ‘roving triton SWAT team’ (interview, 23/7/2018). If the

initiation box can be more precisely spatialized through the early warning system, then the idea is that a

‘team’ of tritons could be released there and, job complete, rounded up again after the spawning season

for deployment elsewhere.

Whether tritons will perform this labour is uncertain: A researcher joked that after being reared on a

diet of starfish, perhaps the last thing they would do once released was chase more starfish. As if to

illustrate, we watched one of AIMS’ brood-stock tritons trying to escape its aquarium, whilst a starfish

lay sedate on the bottom. Moreover, how the correspondence between starfish and snails unfolds on the

reef may differ from an aquarium, my interviewee wondered whether starfish might decide “OK, I’m

not scared anymore” and aggregate anyway (interview, 23/7/2018).

Figure11:Atritonattemptsaget-away.Source:Author

If the tritons continue to prove uncooperative in the flesh, they may be able to provide a disembodied

form of labour. Given that tritons’ desired effect on starfish populations is not actual consumption, their

presence may not be required at all to produce the same effect. Using peptide mimetics, the panic-

inducing chemicals released by tritons could potentially be replicated, mass-produced and released in to

the water at priority sites (Hall, Kocot, et al., 2017). Whether this chemical-predator could be

considered a probiotic approach is questionable, however it does raise questions regarding what

qualifies as the ‘naturalness’ of nature, or what exactly is required of nonhumans when enlisted as

labourers in environmentalities.

4.3.4. Fish predation

Earlier I suggested that zoning had very material consequences on reef assemblages. One is on crown-

of-thorns populations: “sites that were zoned as no-take areas (in 2004) entered the control program

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with better coral cover and smaller and fewer crown-of-thorns starfish” (David Westcott, GBRRS,

17/7/2018). Researchers are therefore (re)turning to zoning as a control technique which, by

encouraging natural processes, might create a discouraging environment for outbreak formation.

However it is unclear exactly why zoning is consequential, or what mechanisms translate a zoning

decision into the desired processes (AIMS researcher, interview, 17/7/2018). There is some evidence

that several fish species predate on starfish, especially in larval and juvenile stages, however most of

these are not commercially or recreationally valuable. Thus it is not entirely clear how zoning

influences their populations. Again, researchers are looking to extend human sensory capacities. The

eDNA techniques developed for the early warning system are used here for rendering predator-prey

relationships visible in ‘fish poo’ (AIMS, 2018a). Researchers capture fish from the Reef, bring them to

an on-boat aquarium, then wait for the fish to ‘poo’ and analyse the sample for crown-of-thorns DNA

(AIMS researcher, interview, 17/7/2018). This could inform a list of predators, which might be a strong

basis for rezoning areas of the reef.

Nevertheless, how and if the naturalness of nature can be harnessed through zoning is contested.

Rezoning decisions affect other reef users and so create pressure to demonstrate outcomes which,

because the mechanisms are not well understood, would be impossible to guarantee. This is

conditioned by the wider sense that zoning is no longer sufficient for managing the Anthropocene Reef,

it will not have the immediate effect that urgency seems to demand: “We’re not managing the same

reefs of the past, so things like NTAs (no-take areas) won’t work in the same way” (David Bellwood,

CRFS, 19/7/2018). Thus certain researchers are sceptical of others advocating strongly for rezoning,

suggesting “when you get the next outbreak you’re gonna (sic) look pretty silly” (JCU researcher,

interview, 24/7/2018).

4.3.5. Plural approaches

There is, however, enthusiasm for specifically no-take zoning the initiation box in combination with

other approaches (AIMS researcher, interview, 17/7/2018). We can understand these three approaches

together as attempts to rethink the purpose of control in more fluid, systemic terms. For the early

warning system, sites emerge as priorities because, through automated surveillance, an incubating

threat can be discerned within them. Manual control, predator introductions and zoning decisions can

then follow from this. No particular site or set of relations is de facto privileged, rather they gain

significance in processes of emergence. In other words, the spacetimes of an emerging outbreak, when

rendered visible, denote where control should take place.

This is not a guarantee of prevention, as Swyngedouw and Ernstson note, natures “will continue to act

in strange, unaccounted for, excessive manners that preclude…Anthropocenic adaptive control and

resilient management” (2018:18). However, there is little indication that those involved believe they

could fully account for these excesses. As one researcher suggested, “a lot of people say you’re never

gonna (sic) be successful…but maybe outbreaks won’t be as bad or the reef will have the resilience to

bounce back and I think that’s all you can really hope to achieve” (JCU researcher, interview,

24/7/2018).

Perhaps the main issue is the economic emphasis of prioritization, which those advocating for the early

warning system and more systemic control efforts have to contend against. The resultant interventions

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poorly account for threats whose spatialities and temporalities do not neatly fit in to the categories of

present/future and economically-valuable/not. For Sheriden Morris the major shift in thinking recently

has been to ask “when do we consider crown-of-thorns starfish a pest?” (GBRRS, 16/7/2018).

Embedded in this question are also those of when to intervene and how, and I hope it has become

evident that there are no straightforward answers. Arriving at one answer is to risk being undermined

by the starfish themselves, and the pest that helps to coordinate one control effort may be

counterproductive to another. This indicates, in advance of the deployment of various other

interventions, the difficulty of stacking up, or making commensurable, different approaches which

enact different spatial-temporal and operational logics.

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5. Conclusion

This dissertation resulted from a conviction that human geography stands to gain from a greater

attentiveness to the ocean and to oceanic life. I have outlined how Reef management is becoming anew

under an altered, anthropocenic premise and a coupled affective condition of urgency. The implication

here is that the Reef will not endure in to the future without action and intervention. This is taken to

require optimization and prioritization, which I have argued perform particular positions regarding

what is worth saving and how to proceed. I have suggested that maintaining the aquarium-like

configurations of the Reef-as-lively-commodity is foremost among these priorities. Looming

obdurately amidst all this activity is the crown-of-thorns starfish: ready to eat, subvert or otherwise

unravel the achievements of scientists and managers. One way or another, the starfish are there to live

with, and hopes of maintaining a flourishing Reef in to the future have to confront and contend with

their presence.

There are, I argue, several implications emergent from this research. The first concerns directions in

more-than-human scholarship. Kohn (2010, in Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010) argues “If we take

otherness to be the privileged vantage from which we defamiliarize our “nature,” we risk making our

forays into the nonhuman a search for ever‐stranger positions from which to carry out this project”. Is

this contribution simply about adding a new, strange creature to the troupe of animals familiar to more-

than-human research, and if not, what kind of project might a widening/deepening bestiary be? The

crown-of-thorns starfish is certainly strange, but I have argued the pest is the figurehead of a project to

make-familiar, with lethal consequences. Human-starfish relations cohere, if at all, around death,

exclusion and the avoidance of encounter. In short, they are awkward. However, they matter for

exploring multiple modes of living with, for enlarging space for an ethics of detachment (Ginn, 2014)

as well as togetherness. This case therefore adds to accounts of separation, exteriority and excess,

building upon a prominent relational emphasis (e.g. Clark & Yusoff, 2017; Ginn, 2014; Swyngedouw

& Ernstson, 2018). Moreover, the terrestrial emphasis in the literature, not simply ambivalent to

underwater life, produces it as a marginal concern. This dissertation has made a case for underwater

worlds becoming with (Haraway, 2008) human endeavours, rather than as separate to them. Cultivating

an attentiveness to these worlds could involve, for example, developing novel diving methodologies

(Merchant, 2011b; Picken & Ferguson, 2014; Squire, 2017), but this may disclose an ocean only

accessible through immersion and embodiment, thereby discouraging others. I have demonstrated that

there is also much to learn of oceanic life from distal encounters, which do not require such specialist

skill sets.

Secondly, this research contributes to work expanding upon discursive treatments of invasions with

empirical investigations of how they are produced in practice (e.g. Helmreich, 2009; Lien & Law,

2011; Wanderer, 2015). This spiny choreography of starfish and humans2 demonstrates control as

fragile and always-incomplete, achieved in negotiation with that which exceeds it. There is always an

excess to the ‘controllable starfish’: some starfish hide, some are too small, some might refuse to be

scared by a snail, some are simply too numerous. Secondly, an outbreak, rather than self-evident, is

produced in unequal negotiations between divergent logics with different problem definitions. This

underlines a need for investigation of how biosecurity practices come to be, and how they could be

2SeeGinn’s‘slimychoreography’,2014

40

otherwise, in addition to what they do. Thirdly, the case highlights the fluidity of categories like native,

alien, pest, invasive. As established configurations are increasingly churned up and actions in advance

of the future proliferate, this merits sustained attention to how animals’ lives become enmeshed in

frenzied shifts between encouraged, tolerated and persecuted.

This brings me to the final consideration, of governing futures in the Anthropocene. The literature on

governing futures has been decidedly anthropocentric in focus, and there is little indication of how such

practices affect animals’ lives3. I return here to Line Bay’s assertion that ‘we are living in a warming

future’ (GBRRS, 16/7/2018). On the Anthropocene Reef, killing crown-of-thorns starfish is about

creating/maintaining the conditions of possibility for future interventions, more so than securing valued

configurations. This has implications for how we understand biopolitical practices. If a differential

valuation of life can be explicitly about future configurations, then concerted attention to how futures

come to condition conservation practices seems timely.

3AlthoughseeBraverman,2017;Buscher,2018

41

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Appendices

Appendix A: Interviews

Date/time Institution Role

16/7/2018 17:00-18:00 QUT Professor- Robotics and Autonomous Systems

17/7/2018 12:30-13:00 AIMS Principal Research Scientist- Tropical Water Quality and Impacts

17/7/2018 17:00-17:30 UQ Researcher- Marine spatial ecology

18/7/2018 12:30-13:00 GBRMPA Manager- Crown-of-Thorns Control Program

18/7/2018 12:30-13:00 CSIRO Marine ecologist and Team Leader- Oceans and Atmosphere

19/7/2018 13:00-13:30 JCU Associate Professor and Program Leader- Social Science

19/7/2018 17:30-18:00 JCU Professor and Chief Investigator- Marine Biology and Ecology

23/7/2018 14:00-16:30 AIMS Principal Research Scientist- Push-Pull Pest Control

24/7/2018 13:00-14:00 JCU Professor and Chief Investigator- Marine Biology and Ecology (repeat)

25/7/2018 13:00-14:00 GBRMPA Manager- Crown-of-Thorns Control Program (repeat)

Appendix B: Symposium Presentations

Name and institution Event and date Presentation title

Sheriden Morris, RRRC GBR Restoration Symposium, 16/7/2018

New approaches, transdisciplinary work and synthesis is needed to solve GBR problems: Integrated Pest Management for COTS

Line Bay, AIMS GBR Restoration Symposium, 16/7/2018

Next generation corals for tomorrow’s reefs

Frank Mars, Mars inc. GBR Restoration Symposium, 16/7/2018

Building reefs versus planting corals- examples from Indonesia

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Wendy Morris, TTNQ GBR Restoration Symposium, 16/7/2018

Economic value and importance of geographic scale in communications around reef health

Ken Anthony et al., AIMS GBR Restoration Symposium, 16/7/2018

Tackling decision challenges for reef restoration and adaptation- what strategies will sustain reef values?

Mark Baird, CSIRO GBR Restoration Symposium, 17/7/2018

Keynote- Is it feasible and worth altering temperature and light stress on the Great Barrier Reef?

David Westcott, CSIRO GBR Restoration Symposium, 17/7/2018

Towards an integrated pest management approach to crown-of-thorns starfish on the Great Barrier Reef

Cameron Fletcher et al., CSIRO

GBR Restoration Symposium, 17/7/2018

Innovations: Ecologically-informed tactical reef scale control using the COTS Control Centre

Sven Uthicke, AIMS GBR Restoration Symposium, 17/7/2018

Using environmental DNA to inform COTS management

Darren Cameron, GBRMPA

GBR Restoration Symposium, 17/7/2018

The evolution of the COTS control program on the GBR

Russ Babcock et al., CSIRO

GBR Restoration Symposium, 17/7/2018

Can we prevent the next COTS outbreak?

Paul Hardisty, AIMS GBR Restoration Symposium, 18/7/2018

Symposium wrap-up

Chris Gillies, The Nature Conservancy

GBR Restoration Symposium, 18/7/2018

Symposium wrap-up

Pete Mumby, UQ Coral Reef Futures Symposium, 19/7/2018

Systemic resilience of the Great Barrier Reef

David Bellwood, JCU Coral Reef Futures Symposium, 19/7/2018

Fishes, functions, and the future of coral reefs

David Wachenfeld, GBRMPA

Coral Reef Futures Symposium, 19/7/2018

Beyond traditional adaptive management: protecting the future of the Great Barrier Reef

Appendix C: Symposium Topics and Themes

Topics

• Crown-of-thorns starfish- research/management/new directions/contention

• Decision-making approaches

• Engineering solutions/challenges

• Social license

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• Governance

Themes

• Innovation/doing things differently

• Prioritization and optimization

• Economic value/tourism

• Research/management relations

• Cooperation/collaboration

• Urgency

• Contention

Appendix D: Sample of Interview Questions

How long have you been researching crown-of-thorns starfish/involved in crown-of-thorns starfish

management?

What have some of the major developments been over that time?

How would you explain the major shift towards control in the last decade?

Why do you think crown-of-thorns starfish control is important?

Why is it that control has intensified in such a way whilst some of the major questions at the heart of

the controversy remain unanswered?

How do those questions figure in current research?

What do you find most interesting, and most frustrating about working with crown-of-thorns starfish?

What is new about the Integrated Pest Management framework? How influential has that framework

been?

Where does your institution fit in to the current landscape of research/management? How are roles

divided between institutions?

What are the implications of the recent GBR Foundation funding?

What do you understand to be the major issues going forward? What is likely to happen between now

and the next outbreak, and what do you think should happen?

Questions specific to research

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