NH 084
Sea Star
Category: Echinoderms
Family: Ophidiasteridae
In contrast to most of the specimens that are posted where I generally know what it is but don't know the locality, this particular guy had a label as to where it originated but not a whisper as to its identification. First you should all understand that the scientific way to talk about these guys is to call them 'sea stars' and not 'starfish.' This is generally just because they are in no way related to fish other than that they are both animals, fish being (Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata) and sea stars being (Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Echinodermata), i.e. humans are closer to fish than these guys (because we also have a backbone).
So while I knew that this sea star came from the Philippines I had the hardest time trying to figure out what the classification of it was. Doing some internet searches wasn't leading me anywhere, other than it was called a White Finger Sea Star, but that's just the colloquially name and while they were sold under that name none of the retailers knew the actual name. Well with a little help, it turns out that this guy is actually a Blue Starfish (Linckia laevigata), and that's no misnomer. Turns out that these sea stars are a bit thicker in the 'arms' and actually blue but are dried out and bleached in the sun.
They're a fairly common for collecting both dead and alive (for salt-water aquariums). I'll talk more about sea stars later with another asteroid post, but for now you can learn more about Blue Starfish here or if you're interested in raising Blue Sea Stars here.
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