chomping their way through, cigar-chomping

Scientists first raised the alarm 50 years ago about crown-of-thorns starfish chomping their way through the Great Barrier Reef. In 2015 we reported that divers were injecting starfish with a solution made of salts from cattle-bile. It killed more than 300,000 starfish in its first year of use. Unfortunately, that is only a fraction of the tens of millions thought to infest the entire reef

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DealBook took a look at Mr. Schwartz, a polished investment banker who helped build the firm's corporate finance unit in the 1980s -- and represents a stylistic change from his cigar-chomping predecessor.

chomp
verb [I or T] (ALSO champ) INFORMAL
to chew food noisily:
He was chomping away on a bar of chocolate.
There she sat, happily chomping her breakfast.

pre・de・ces・sor

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━━ n. 前任者; 先輩; 先祖; 前の物.