Sunday, April 02, 2006

I'm a big fan of Gorgonians

.....and also, as you may have guessed, bad puns; this being Gorgonia flabellum, the Venus Sea Fan.
You used to see these in tourist shops dried as souvenirs (I can't think why) but this practise seems happily to be on the decline. Sea fans are effectively nets on a stick with primitive stinging and sticking cells to catch passing planktonic food. Judging by the scale of some of the specimens we saw they must do it pretty effectively.

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