Anemone?

[divergirl07]

any clues on this critter ?

[nwscubamom]

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 :-)

[Dusty2]

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.

[divergirl07]

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!!!???

[nwscubamom]

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 :-)

[dwashbur]

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

[Greg Jensen]

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.

[nwscubamom]

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