Pretty in Pink
Extending its arms 8 inches (20 cm) across, a pink crab perches on a bed of soft coral 2,310 feet (740 meters) deep in the Sangihe Talaud region off of Indonesia. The Little Hercules ROV captured this image of the colorful critter during a 2010 ocean expedition. Crabs like these are only found living on soft coral.
Credit: NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program, INDEX-SATAL 2010
(via: Live Science)
Carnation Corals (Dendronephthya)
Strikingly beautiful carnation corals in the genus Dendronephthya are among the most commonly traded soft corals. However, these corals are poor choices for aquarium hobbyists. Since they lack algal symbionts (zooxanthellae), they must extract all of their food from the water. But getting the right balance of nutrients is difficult in an aquarium, so most captive Dendronephthya die within a few weeks.
This spectacular specimen, hanging out with an egg cowrie snail, was photographed in the wild in North Sulawesi by Bernard Dupont. It comes to EOL via Flickr (cc-by-nc-sa): http://www.flickr.com/photos/berniedup/7970532646/
More about these corals: http://eol.org/pages/41372
Gorgonian Wrapper (Nemanthus annamensis)
Also known as the Zebra-striped Gorgonian Wrapper as an reference to its coloration, the Gorgonain Wrapper is a species of colonial sea anemone found throughout the Indo-Pacific. This cnidarian is commonly found in strings of individual polyps all of which with individual tentacles.
Phylogeny
Animalia-Cnidaria-Anthozoa-Hexacorallia-Actiniaria-Nemanthidae-Nemanthus-annamensis
Dead man’s fingers (Alcyonium digitatum)
is a species of soft coral commonly found off the coasts of the north Atlantic. Like most corals this species is a colony of small animals called zooids. These colonies attach themselves to the bedrock or large stones, some colonies have also been seen growing on the shells of crabs and large gastropods. Like all corals A. digitatum is a suspension feeder filtering the water and taking in any plankton and oxygen they find.
Phylogeny
Animalia-Cnidaria-Anthozoa-Octocorallia-Alcyonacea-Alcyoniidae-Alcyonium-digitatum
Anemone-octocoral symbiosis. Image captured by the Little Hercules ROV at 600 meters depth on the Paramount seamounts on July 14, 2011, during the Galapágos Rift Expedition.
Image courtesy of NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program.
Galatheid squat lobster on an Anthomastus coral. Image captured by the Little Hercules ROV at 600 meters depth on the Paramount seamounts on July 14, 2011, during the Galapágos Rift Expedition.
Image courtesy of NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program.
Solitary stony cup coral with tentacles extended in feeding position. Image captured by the Little Hercules ROV at 600 meters depth on the Paramount seamounts on July 14, 2011, during the Galapágos Rift Expedition.
Image courtesy of NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program.
Close up on octocoral, likely a member of the family Primnoidae. Image captured by the Little Hercules ROV at 600 meters depth on the Paramount seamounts on July 14, 2011, during the Galapágos Rift Expedition.
Image courtesy of NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program.
This beautiful image displays a four-way assocation between creatures:
The hermit crab is associated with the soft coral (with its polyps retracted). The hermit crab is also associated with an episymbiontic anemone - the snail shell provides a home to both animals. Image captured by the Little Hercules ROV at 422 meters depth on ‘Site K’, explored July 11, 2010 during the INDEX SATAL 2010 Expedition.
Image courtesy of NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program, INDEX-SATAL 2010.
A crab with outstretched arms about 8 inches across, which are only observed living on soft coral. Image captured August 5, 2010 by the Little Hercules ROV at 704 meters depth on a new seamount mapped by Baruna Jaya IV during the INDEX SATAL 2010 Expedition.
Image courtesy of NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program, INDEX-SATAL 2010.
A beautiful toadstool soft coral (Anthomastus sp.) at Northampton Sea Mount, near Hawaii.
(via: NOAA Ocean Explorer)
Venus Sea Fan (Gorgonia flabellum)
The Venus sea fan is a delicate-looking colonial coral forming a fan shaped lattice-work of branches in a single plane. The coral grows from a small base and has several main branches, a larger number of side branches and a network of small branchlets. The colour is white, yellowish or pale lavender. The fan is orientated perpendicular to the incoming waves and can grow to a height of 1.5 m.
The skeleton of the Venus sea fan is composed of calcite and a collagen-like substance. Embedded in this are the coral polyps, each of which is a filter feeder and extends its eight tentacles to catch plankton drifting past with the current. The tissues contain a symbiotic dinoflagellate algae Symbiodinium spp. which is photosynthetic and uses sunlight to create organic carbon compounds which are then available to the host coral…
(read more: Wikipedia) (image: Fernando Herranz Martín)
Basket Star and Octocoral
A basket star clings to Metallogorgia octocoral. Octocorals are non-reef-building corals and are often referred to as “soft corals.” While they come in a variety of shapes and colors, all octocorals have eight-fold symmetry, or eight-branched tentacles, in their polyp structure (hence the “octo,” which means eight).
Want to know more? Check this out:
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/03mountains/background/octocorals/octocorals.html
Macro image of tiny octocorals at the GC852 sampling station at 1500m depth.
Image courtesy of Aquapix and Expedition to the Deep Slope 2007, NOAA-OE.
(via: NOAA OCean Explorer)
A close-up of the scleractinian coral, Lophelia pertusa, from the Mississippi Canyon 751 site at approximately 450 m depth. This image was taken with the SeaEye Falcon DR ROV during the first cruise of this program in September 2008.
Image courtesy of Lophelia II 2009: Deepwater Coral Expedition: Reefs, Rigs, and Wrecks.
(via: NOAA Ocean Explorer)
