Fish & Water - Sounds Wild
Basket Star

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Transcript

Basket star

I'm halibut fishing in Icy Strait near Glacier Bay when my friend hooks up in 120 feet of water. He's got something on the bottom, but it's not a halibut. He manages to pull in a big tree branch, and an odd-looking creature is attached to it. It's a foot across, a weird sea star with dozens of tentacle-like arms branching from five main arms. It's a basket star.

The smaller arms are waving and curling and I carefully peel the orangish-tan basket star from the branch... it's moving, far more active and agile than a typical sea star.

Basket stars are a group of sea stars known as brittle stars. Many of them have these characteristic many-branched arms, and they are the most mobile of all sea stars. They favor deep sea habitats - they're rarely in water less than 50 feet deep, and can be found in water thousands of feet deep. They may live up to 35 years and weigh as much as 11 pounds, although the one I'm holding is closer to three pounds. They use their tentacle-like arms to grab and hold prey, knotting the branchlets around the prey and pulling it into the central mouth.

Sea stars used to be called star fish, but they're not fish, they're echinoderms, a group of marine animals that includes sea urchins and sand dollars, named for their rough skin. Echinoderms have no blood and instead use water in their vascular system.