More mysteries with Porania pulvillus! Yay for Crowd Sourcing!

Thanks to this weeks' blog, a new mystery photograph from Diver/photographer George B, who sent me an image of this strange swelling on Porania pulvillus. Image was taken from the west coast of Scotland at 20 m depth.

Is it feeding and have a distended disk (as other starfish do here)? Does it have a parasite? Some kind of tumor?  Not sure it has ever been reported before!!!

This is a neat highlight, that even though you have a species which has been recognized since 1776 and lives in the North Atlantic where many divers and scientists are active, many of these species remain poorly known.

It also highlights the value of crowd sourcing. Images on Flickr and YouTube add so many more eyes and observations...

Thanks again!