Reef scientist Bernie Degnan and his wife Sandie have identified a love drug for the crown-of-thorns starfish that scientists now believe will "lure" the starfish to a faster – and far cheaper – death.

The pair identified a self-produced "perfume" that is a fatal attraction for the crown-of-thorns starfish, a quick breeder that is decimating parts of the Great Barrier Reef.

Biologists say an average 40-centimetre wide adult crown-of-thorns starfish can kill 480 square centimetres of live coral in a day.

Crown-of-thorns starfish are removed by hand by divers employed to remove them from different reef systems throughout the Great Barrier Reef.

Mr and Mrs Degnan, professors from the University of Queensland, plan to use love, not war to fight the starfish.

"These starfish don't have very good eyes and like a lot of animals in the ocean they rely heavily on smell," Bernie said.

"So what we've tried to do is make them give off a particular odour and then characterise that odour in molecular terms and then see if we can get the starfish to react to that odour."

The crown-of-thorns starfish "aggregate" together to breed, triggered by the "perfume", he explained.

When they move closer together they can be more easily caught, fished or killed.

"They release this chemical which is dissolved in seawater and they can sense it at a distance – they don't have to see anything – they just smell it," he said.

"And they move towards it, like a chemical gradient.

"It's a bit like salmon swimming upstream – they recognise something and they just go for it."

Crown-of-thorns starfish reproduce by "aggregating" together, then both the male and female starfish "spawn" their eggs and sperm into the seawater. The female can release between 60-120 million eggs in a mating season, once a year.

How the Degnans' love drug works

It's all about trickery and illusion, Professor Bernie Degnan says.

"In order for starfish to reproduce they have to aggregate. So what we thought we would do is to trick them into aggregating before they can reproduce," he said.

He believed there was potential for secondary industries to grow from the future collection phase when the starfish were lured together.

"The best thing to do would be to design a big lobster trap or a big fish trap," Professor Degnan said.

"Then you don't have to do anything. You could get fishermen to put the traps around the reef with these 'protein' baits in them (which emit the crown-of-thorns' 'perfume').

"And the traps will fill up with these crown-of-thorns starfish that think they are going ahead for mating and the fishermen will simply harvest them out.

"You don't need to get anyone in the water, you won't have to collect them by hand.

"And I guess if you make the traps big enough you can get hundreds or thousands of them in one go."

That was the next phase in the couple's research, which would be explained in international science journal Nature on Thursday.

The Degnans worked alongside a team of UQ researchers, longstanding colleagues at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) and University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) to develop the plan.

In scientific terms it is a study of geonomes and pheromones to identify ways to tackle a major biological problem by letting love do the work.

Professor Degnan says their idea is simple but hopefully effective.

"Millions of dollars have been spent over many years on a variety of ways to capture crown-of-thorns starfish, whether it by divers collecting them, by injections or by robotics," he said.

"Now we've found the genes the starfish use to communicate, we can begin fabricating environmentally safe baits that trick them into gathering in one place, making it easier to remove reproductively-primed animals."