This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 10:40 pm and is filed under About, Adventure Cruises, History, Information, Migration, Sites, Snorkeling, Snuba, Watching, Whales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Photo Courtesy National Geographic
Twinkle, twinkle, purple star. Keeping with the holiday spirit we will share information on this very little known creature discovered in the western chain by researchers. This appears to be in the family of linckia, a species of sea stars found mainly in the Indo-Pacific. This genus was named after the German-born naturalist Johann Heinrich Linck (1674-1734).
Most stars are active in the nighttime hours and are meat eating predators. The linckia are a favorite food of harlequin shrimp, who will work as a team and flip the star over making it unable to move. They will drag it to their den and clip off a leg. What is really interesting is this new specie, the purple variety, was observed being very active in the daylight hours, making researchers believe that possibly it has very few predators. The sea stars are in the echinoderm family making them related to sea cucumbers and urchins.
Snorkeling in Hawaii enables us to glimpse into the undersea world of many animals, and sea stars are quite abundant. I’m ready when you are!
