What Is Natural?: Coral Reef Crisis

Why has a once-obscure starfish destroyed swaths of coral reefs all over the Pacific? What should we do about it? Sapp, a professor of the history of science at York University in Canada, offers few answers in this digressive, poorly focused study. The spiny, poisonous crown-of-thorns starfish mystified biologists by turning up in great numbers on Australia's Green Island Reef in the early 1960s, injuring tourists and eating the coral. By 1970, crown-of-thorns infestations were laying waste to reefs from Australia to Guam. Sapp follows the intense scientific debates over whether human activity caused the starfish booms, and whether and how to save the coral. Sometimes he explains the reefs' travails in detail; other times he treats the crown-of-thorns outbreaks as case studies in ecological policy, comparing them to later, larger debates about, for example, El Nino. Sapp has collected plenty of scientific articles, government reports and conference proceedings from each stage of the starfish debate. But he fails to tie his sources together. Instead, he jumps from one broad topic to another: should scientists interfere with natural processes they don't fully understand? How do the media and public react to environmental crises? How have these reactions changed since the 1960s? How should coral-reef experts ""behave in the midst of global environmental uncertainties?"" What can those starfish outbreaks teach us about other, newer threats to coral reefs? It's hard to tell, in this sometimes technical, jumbled and very academic book, which problem Sapp wants most to solve, or whether he even offers any solutions. (Jan.)