Does this remind anyone else of that scene from Dune?
**Note—**avoid swimming in the area if your suit looks anything like this:
Autonomous kill capability. Coming soon to a Predator drone somewhere near you.
See? Here we thought SkyNet was something that would come from above! Turns out, it begins in the sea!
hah I knew I was ahead of the curve.
“We’re all dead from a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine”
Now look, I know there are going to be all kinds of snarky jokes made about the Law of Unintended Consequences, and how nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan, but in all seriousness this may be vital to preserving coral habitat in the affected areas. What people sometimes fail to understand is just how fragile the ocean ecosystem is, and how any substaAAAAAHHH THE DAMN THING STUNG ME! OH SHIT I CAN’T FEEL MY ARM!
Thought. What about some starfish-specific pathogen or predator?
Aquatic cane toads perhaps?
Actually I think they are using a starfish-specific poison. And in all seriousness, this isn’t really any different from any other straightforward kill-exactly-one-species wildlife management strategy, just with more killer robot goodness.
EDIT: just noticed you said “pathogen” and not poison. Ehhhh, consult a microbiologist but germs make me more nervous than chemicals and robots.
SKINNER
Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
LISA
But isn’t that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we’re overrun by lizards?
SKINNER
No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They’ll wipe out the lizards.
LISA
But aren’t the snakes even worse?
SKINNER
Yes, but we’re prepared for that. We’ve lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
LISA
But then we’re stuck with gorillas!
SKINNER
No, that’s the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
This makes me sad.
I just hope it doesn’t take out all the starfish.
Before teh intarwebz, that reference would have sailed on by me. Now suddenly this is going to be my favorite Simpsons episode that I haven’t watched yet!
Before teh intarwebz, you and I would never have been in a situation where I could make that reference to sail right over your head. 
Also, sweet jebus. That episode is from 1998. Sigh…
Automated Cane Toad, yep, that’s what I was thinking…
It sounds like the problem with predators is overfishing, and trying to purposefully infect them with something like sea star wasting disease could be pretty risky.
I’ll just swim naked.
…looks at pubes
“ruh roh”
Yeah! Because fuck starfish!
