ID please

[Jeremy Bouwman]

I've never uploaded pictures into a thread, so please bear with me if i screwed something up along the way...I dove Keystone jetty this past saturday and say a few things that I had never seen there before.

This is some sponge, not sure what kind, but it looks cool.

I think this is some sort of anemone, but it looks like it has sunflower sea star legs...

Thanks for your help!
Jeremy

 

[gcbryan]

Picture #! looks like nudibranch eggs.

I'm not sure regarding picture #2. There is an Orange Sea Cucumber in the lower right corner and the animal in question may be some type of sea cucumber as well but I'm not sure.

 

[diveborg]

1 is definitely a photo of nudi eggs.

 

[nwscubamom]

Jeremy,

Photo #1 is the shot of eggs from a nudibranch (specifically a Dorid) - a type of 'sea slug'. They lay ribbon like clusters that look a lot like a rose!

Photo #2 is an Orange Sea Cucumber (Cucumeria miniata) - and you're spot on when you said it has legs like a Sunflower Star! That's because they are both part of the same grouping (Phylum) - the Echinoderms. They're related, and one thing they share in common are 'tube feet' - a way of attaching and moving around.

Orange Sea Cucumbers use those legs usually to burrow their bodies between rocky cracks, so that all that's left showing usually to divers, is that fluffy orange stuff that looks almost like a plant!

Those are its feeding appendages, and there are exactly TEN main arms (with little branches going out from there). They stick them out in the current and catch any little particles of stuff they can, and one at a time, draw them into their mouth (yes, those weird things actually have a mouth!) and lick off the yummy stuff they just caught for dinner.

Life is good

Hope that helps!

- Janna

 

[RSdiver]

Last weekend's dive with the Marker Buoy Dive Club at Anacortes
http://markerbuoydiveclub.org/
we saw a huge nudibranch egg mass that was 10 inches across and the same off-white color of your photo. I'm guessing something large like a lemon peel Nudi...
Very nice!