The recipient of a bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Williams College, Seton Melvin has served as director of the brain donor program at Mount Sinai Hospital since 1996. An avid traveler, Seton Melvin has visited all seven continents, and has been diving on the Great Barrier Reef.
Since 2010, the Great Barrier Reef has been under constant threat from a coral-eating crown of thorns starfish (COTS) outbreak. In this time, more than 300,000 COTS have been culled along more than 80 reefs, thanks in part to the Indigenous Rangers. In July, the Australian government announced plans to further those efforts by awarding $28.6 million in contracts to mitigate one of the most pressing threats to the reef. This is part of the government’s larger $58 million COTS control program, which falls under its $443.3 million Reef Trust Partnership with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.
The coordinated assault on the COTS, which are able to consume coral at an alarming rate, involves individual boats and divers, in addition to five fully crewed boats, and is supported by research conducted by the National Environmental Science Program. One COTS can eat as much as 32 feet of living coral per year, and the COTS population along the Great Barrier Reef has, in the past, been as high as 1,000 per 2.5 acres.
Seton Melvin 