Northwest Dive Club

any clues on this critter ?

Yup, those are cool to find! They're called the Ten-Tentacled Anemone (Halcampa decemtentaculata). Small little guys, but fun to stumble upon in the sand.

- Janna :-)

There are tons of them up in my favorite site. Always interesting to look at. If you look real close you will see there is a tiny baby one right next to him.

That's what I thought it was , but I was thrown off by the fact that he as MORE than 10 tentacles!!
And I DID see the little baby one! How flippin cute is that!!!???

Yeah, you know it's weird, but the ones we find always seem to have 12 tentacles to them. So much for the name, eh?

- Janna :-)

Maybe whoever named it had extra fingers and didn't know it??????

There are a couple other local species like this that have 12 tentacles- Halcampa crypta and Halcampoides purpurea, plus Peachia has 12 but it doesn' t look like that. In Kozloff's key the 10 vs 12 tentacles is the couplet that separates H. decemtentaculata from the rest.
I think there's some ongoing work still trying to sort the animals out in this group, but based on the key H. crypta might be a better guess.

All I know is Jan spotted one years ago, and then we started noticing them all over the place - and once Andy's Big Book of 'Brates came out, we finally found something that looked close. I didn't realize there were more than one type - very good info and that explains the 10 vs 12 thing we'd observed. Thanks Greg. We might just keep you around.

- Janna