A series of photos of my marine rescue this afternoon.
This 11 Armed Seastar (Coscinasterias muricata) was lying on the stones stranded as the tide receded (the local rocks are covered in mussel beds that are a favourite food), and this one apparently failed to notice the lack of water.
It looked quite dead and dehydrated when I saw it, but given the tide had just gone out, I thought there may be a chance for it, so I picked it up with a stone (they have lots of nasty looking spines), and noticed that there was some movement in it's extremities. So I took it to a shallow pool right at the waters edge with easy access to the sea and released it.
It started to revive within seconds, and by the time I left it it had regained much of it's colour.
As I walked away I noticed an 8 Armed Seastar (Meridiastra calcar) with the same difficulty, so I set it in the recovery ward next to it's big cousin.
It's easy to find information via Google on these beautiful creatures, but here's a quick link for you to get an overview:
http://bie.ala.org.au/species/urn:ls...4-bd2b8778f6dc
