Archive for January, 2009

Starfish facts:

A Starfish is an ocean lifeform that is found all over the world from the deep ocean bed to high coral reefs. They are not fish because they do not have fins or even vertebrae. The ability to squeeze their bodies into small spaces makes starfish one of a special form of ocean life and enable them to hide from predators.

Starfish has five arms and their top surface (or skin) looks spiny. As the name implies, starfish are star shaped. If you turn a starfish over, you can see little tubes that move. They are called tube feet. They help starfish move along the bottom of the sea. They also assist starfish in pulling open a clam or a scallop. Some starfish have armor. For example, the �Crown of Thorns� starfish have spikes all over their bodies.

Many starfish have the ability to extend their stomach which comes in useful when they are digesting food. As a form of ocean life, starfish is a useful part of the ocean ecosystem.

What do starfish eat?

A starfish would eat anything that is small enough to be chopped up and put into its mouth and of course slow enough to be caught. Examples of what most starfish would eat are mussels, clams, and oysters. However, there are some specialized starfish that feed on other ocean life. For example, crown of thorns starfish feed on coral.

Starfish use their tube feet to hang on to the shell of mussels, clams or oysters while pulling the two halves of the shell apart. As soon as a gap opens, starfish extend their stomach into the shell to digest the ocean life inside!

What ocean life feed on starfish?

Because of the starfish's tough skin, starfish are not a major food source for anything else in the ocean, although some fish do try to eat them. Their skin is difficult to eat, painful to swallow, and not too nutritious.

Crown of thorns starfish

The Crown of Thorns starfish are unique ocean life that are well known for eating corals. Crown of thorns starfish have long sharp spines covering its upper surface. There have been times when there are too many crown of thorns starfish on a coral reef resulting in a population outbreak of crown of thorns starfish as coral cover diminished. The first outbreak of crown of thorns starfish to be noticed were at Green Island and nearby coral reefs offshore from Cairns in 1962.