Sea Stars - X-post from environment

You must not call them starfish

I've been guilty of this for many years, but they are not fish and not all are star shaped. Either way, I've seen a few really good sea stars on the beach recently when I turn over rocks. As on land, sea creatures and algaes have their lush, breeding seasons and this year is an interesting one.

Biscuit sea star. Around 5cm (2 in) across. This is not a particularly garish example - some are much more exotic.



Brittle Star. The middle plate is a bit like a crab shell but slightly softer. The five arms are very long - 20 cm or so.



Eleven armed sea star. This is a very small example. That's my hand underneath - I picked it up to have a look at the underside and found it was sucking the innards out of a warrener snail. They don't always have eleven arms - anything from seven, eight to fifteen is normal. Cool thing is if it loses an arm it grows back and sometimes a severed arm will grow a whole new sea star.