Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Gorgeous Closeups of Australian Starfishes!

Seastar Detail - Bateman's Bay
Greetings! This week, I thought I would share some GREAT closeups of the textures and plates on some sea stars from one of my favorite places in the world-AUSTRALIA! 


These were all taken from images on Flickr, and so the original photographers can be found merely by rolling over the image itself. What's great about them, is that the images were taken from LIVING animals, and so their colors remain vibrant! Nothing here is photoshopped.

Contributions herein by photographers:  Bill, Tony Brown, Beth Heap, Leander, Richard Ling,  Lox Pix, Morley Mason, Andrew Newton, Matt Nimbs, Valguille and especially SASpotato! 

An asterinid, Patiriella I think?
Asteroidia | Asterinidae | Patiriella calcar [Variegated Sea Star] - Flat Rock, Ballina, NSW
Cushion-star  Patiriella calca
They look knitted
STARFISH - THE BAY OF FIRES - TASMANIA - AUSTRALIA
Here is a close up of the papulae or gills on Plectaster decanus 
271104 Seastar Close-up Long Bay
Mosaic Starfish
The rest of the animal looks like this. Gorgeous.
Mosaic Sea Star
Some goniasterid beauties! Pentagonaster dubeni
Steps Red Seastar
Pentagonaster pattern
Lovely plate architecture on Tosia australis
Biscuit star detail

From above, these are the surface plates of the goniasterid genus Nectria
Seastar Detail - Bateman's Bay
Any guesses what these are?

and here's what the rest of the goniasterid Nectria looks like!
Eden
image by Peter Southwood, via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goniasteridae#/media/File:Nectria_ocellata_P2133340.JPG

A stunning yellow one!
P1019523c

The very distinctive button like plates on Asterodiscides sp. 
Firebrick Sea Star
P1015682
and from the same animal, the large penultimate marginal plates, which are distinctive of the genus.
P1015662

Some nice spination from what looks to be Coscinasterias
Sea star detail
Uniophora granifera! One of my favorites!
Beaded Seastar

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Beautiful

Anonymous said...

Thank you for collecting and sharing the beauty :)

Johnn Morales said...

Is it a bad thing that they all look like some sort of sweet, delicious confection or cookie? ;)