Echinodermata! Starfish! Sea Urchins! Sea Cucumbers! Stone Lillies! Feather Stars! Blastozoans! Sea Daisies!
Marine invertebrates found throughout the world's oceans with a rich and ancient fossil legacy. Their biology and evolution includes a wide range of crazy and wonderful things. Let me share those things with YOU!
"Giant sea star with an endangered sea-star taxonomist in Japan"
Today..ANOTHER awesome monster starfish from Japan!!!
My colleague, Yoichi Kogure at the Japan Sea National Fisheries Research Institue in Niigata Japan just sent me this GREAT pic of him with what is probably the largest starfish in Japan! (and probably a contender for one of the largest in the world).
The latin name is Mariaster giganteus described by the famous Japanese starfish taxonomist Seitaru Goto in 1914 and seen only rarely since then!
M. giganteus lives in relatively deep-water from the upper continental slopes around Southern Japan. It is a rarely collected species. There have only been maybe two specimens, reported from Japan and I've only seen one specimen from outside Japan.
He has provided a caption for the picture which alludes to the ongoing rarity of sea star taxonomists both in Japan and around the world..
Yoichi proposes a Japanese name for this species:
Daiou gokaku hitode
Which translates into King (Daiou) Pentagonal (Gokaku) Seastar (hitode)
Thanks again to Yoichi! A great weekend to everyone!
Some basket stars, such as Gorgonocephalus have arms that will reach almost 2 to 3 feet across! Not all of them are this big but a lot of them are pretty sizeable.... 2. Ophiopsammus maculata (New Zealand)
A member of the Ophiodermatidae, which are usually pretty small tropical beasts..but this one gets pretty big!
A disk that is about 2-3 inches across with an impressive arm span of over 6 to 7 inches!!
Its unclear how they feed but some suspect that they do something very similar to this! 3. Astrostoma agassizi (Antarctic: Southern Ocean)
Okay, so, I'm cheating. Because Astrostoma agasszi IS a member of the Gorgonocephalidae (see above).
I will probably write this up in more detail later but here's some quick details at this site:
Astrotoma is BIG. Disk is easily 2-3 inches across with correspondingly thick arms.
They live in the Southern Ocean/Antarctica in relatively deep-water (about 90-1500m) and feed on crustaceans and other various prey using their very long arms!
4. Ophiarachna incrassata: Giant Green Fish-eating Brittle Star (tropical Indo-Pacific) I wrote up something about this species awhile back There's a lot of neat things to say about it..but it is BIG. check this video out again! 5. Ophiocoma aethiops (Baja California/Mexico)
All members of the genus Ophiocoma are tropical, shallow-water in all of the world's oceans and all of the species are pretty sizeable. But for some reason, Ophiocoma aethiops from tropical East Pacific is just a bit bigger then the others species of Ophiocoma that one sees in the Indo-Pacific. There's more to this beast..but for now..just appreciate the fact that its a BIG one! Honorable Mention: Stegophiura ponderosa
So, this is a deep-water species (at least 100-500 m) from off the west coast of North America, Japan, and Russia.
This animal is pretty big, but doesn't get beyond about 2 inches in diameter?? So how do they qualify??
Stegophiura ponderosa is thick!!! Maybe about two to three disks thick???
Unfortunately, very little is known about its biology. What does it do with all that heavy body mass?? Arms that don't really move out of one plane?? What do they eat??
How do we know so little about critters that are this frakkin' big????
"Giant sea star with an endangered sea-star taxonomist in Japan"
