Dozens of living starfish found dumped in Portelet waste bin
‘IGNORANT individuals’ are suspected of dumping dozens of living starfish into a waste bin at Portelet.
The creatures were found by a contact of La Societe Guernesiaise’s conservation officer, Jamie Hooper.
The woman was walking her dog on the beach when she came across two starfish on the shore, above the high water mark.
She picked the starfish up and returned them to the sea, but it was when she came to drop a dog waste bag into a nearby bin that she realised how the starfish had come to be so far up the beach.
‘She found it had a number of starfish in it,’ said Mr Hooper.
‘It was distressing for her – she’d gone and rescued the two she found on the beach and thought she had done her part in looking after that environment, went to the bin and found dozens of them.’
He said it seemed likely that the two on the beach had fallen from the vehicle or out of the container that someone had used to take the starfish to the bin.
Starfish feed on – among other thing – clams and oysters, and would also eat ormers and even lobsters, and Mr Hooper suspected that whoever dumped them in the bin was an ormer collector, although he said it could have been fishermen who use pots.
‘It’s one of those ignorant activities that a small number of individuals think is justified because they basically compete with us humans for the species we like to gather and eat.’
This was not the first time he had been made aware of starfish being put in bins and two years ago he took a photograph of a similar situation.
In his opinion this was an animal welfare issue, but such matters are not covered by the current legislation.
States veterinary officer David Chamberlain said that while the island’s laws protect such species as hedgehogs and bats, starfish were not covered.
‘Strangely, because starfish are not vertebrates the animal welfare ordinance would struggle to protect them,’ he said.
‘I believe Alderney are way ahead of us in getting some wildlife legislation drafted,’ he said.
His department had been made aware of the starfish found in the bin and said they came to a similar conclusion to Mr Hooper, that whoever did it was trying to protect molluscs such as ormers and oysters.
