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Wildlife Spotting

Photo by KenSteele
Published on Project Noah
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Field Notes

Description:

Unidentified sea creature found washed up on shore @ hastings Point Beach, NSW.

Approx. 30cm long, soft. Disc-like structures appear to have spikes of some kind. There is a hermit crab claw sticking out on the bottom right of the sea creature.

Tube worm, possibly?

Habitat:

Pacific Ocean

Species ID Suggestions

Spiky Sea Pen

Pteroeides spinosum

Comments (7)

Most similar picture I have found: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wildsingapore/5003196104/
Just emailed him and sent him the link to this page. Fingers crossed!
Just thinking it looked something like the sea pen shown in Image 22 of the slideshow embedded in this article: http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2011/06/29/inflatable-shark-pancake-sea-slug-among-new-species-discoveries/#168101=21 Looks like Gary Williams of the California Academy of Sciences might be the person to ask.
Well noted Stephen http://www.pinterest.com/FootballSteve/sea-pen/
No problem! I hope someone on here can help identify it!
Thanks for posting this Ken! I found this at the mouth of the Cudgera Creek estuary that runs directly into the Pacific Ocean. We had a major storm cell pass over the region late last week so it has possibly come in due to that activity. No one locally I have asked has seen anything remotely similar. Some have suggested that it could be part of another animal but it seemed to be intact. Hope that someone can help solve this mystery!
Photographed
PublishedSeptember 1, 2014

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