Lionfish, Sea Urchins, Crown of Thorns - Reef Life of the Andaman - Part 17

Lionfishes, sea urchins and the crown of thorns starfish. Part 17 of my DVD, "Reef Life of the Andaman", available at http://www.bubblevision.com/marine-life-DVD.htm

In this video we take a look at marine life from Thailand and Burma that uses venomous spines as a form of defence.

Of the lionfish family, the red lionfish, Pterois volitans, is most common across the Andaman Sea, but it is possible that some or all of these are actually the similar Devil Firefish, Pterois miles. Both species are very similar and possess venomous spines along their fins. We meet specimens across various dive sites near Phuket, at Richelieu Rock, and at Black Rock in the Mergui Archipelago.

Other species that are included are the zebra lionfish, Dendrochirus zebra, the rare frillfin turkeyfish, Pterois mombasae, and the spotfin lionfish, Pteroid antennata.

We then look at the crown-of-thorns starfish, or crown-of-thorns sea star, Acanthaster planci, which also has stinging, venomous spines on its body that contain a neuro-toxin intended to cause paralysis. This starfish feeds on hard corals and human intervention has been required in some parts of the world where these starfish threatened to destroy enitre reef systems.

Finally we examine sea urchins, specifically the black longspine urchin, Diadema setosum, which is prevalent across the Andaman Sea. We see a large colony of them at Racha Yai Island, near Phuket in Thailand.

The full narration is available as English, German or Spanish subtitles by turning on the closed captions (CC). There are also closed captions available showing scientific and common names of the marine life in English, German or Dutch, along with dive site names.

Thanks to Erik Verkoyen for the music track, "Black Corals".

"Reef Life of the Andaman" is being serialised weekly on YouTube. Please subscribe to my channel to receive notifications of new episodes as I release them. The series features descriptions of 213 different marine species including more than 100 tropical fish, along with sharks, rays, moray eels, crabs, lobsters, shrimps, sea slugs, cuttlefish, squid, octopus, turtles, sea snakes, starfish, sea cucumbers, corals, worms etc..

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The video was shot by Nick Hope with a Sony VX2000 DV camera in a Gates housing. It was edited in Sony Vegas Pro then deinterlaced with QTGMC and upscaled to 720p HD in AviSynth.