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Red sea fingers is similar in shape to Alcyonium digitatum but is usually blood red or rust coloured. The finger-shaped lobes are slender and can be up to thirty centimetres long. The polyps are white and each one has eight pinnate tentacles which give the colony a feathery appearance when they are extended. [2]
Some gorgonians contain algae, or zooxanthellae. This symbiotic relationship assists in giving the gorgonian nutrition by photosynthesis. Gorgonians possessing zooxanthellae are usually characterized by brownish polyps. Gorgonians are found primarily in shallow waters, though some have been found at depths of several thousand feet.
The two main subclasses of Anthozoa are the Hexacorallia, members of which have six-fold symmetry and includes the stony corals, sea anemones, tube anemones and zoanthids; and the Octocorallia, which have eight-fold symmetry and includes the soft corals and gorgonians (sea pens, sea fans and sea whips), and sea pansies.
Fire coral has several common growth forms; these include branching, plate, and encrusting. Branching fire coral adopts a calcareous structure which branches off into rounded, finger-like tips. Plate-growing fire coral forms a shape similar to that of fellow cnidarian lettuce corals - erect, thin sheets, which group together to form a colony ...
Leptogorgia virgulata is a colonial coral averaging about 20 cm (8 in) in height, usually between 15 and 60 cm as an adult, but sometimes reaching 1 metre (3.3 ft). It does not have the rigid calcium carbonate skeleton possessed by the true corals but its stalks have an internal, axial skeleton which is stiffened by sclerites and covered by an outer layer, the coenenchyme.
Many of the smaller branches are compressed in the plane of the fan, which distinguishes this species from the Venus sea fan (Gorgonia flabellum). It often has small accessory fans growing out sideways from the main fan. It grows to 1.5 m (5 ft) tall and is variable in colour, being whitish, yellow, or pale purple.
There are around 400,000 grey seals worldwide, with about 120,000 living off the coast of Britain.
Hippocampus bargibanti, also known as Bargibant's seahorse or the pygmy seahorse, is a seahorse of the family Syngnathidae found in the central Indo-Pacific area. [3]This pygmy seahorse is tiny—usually less than 2 centimetres (0.79 in) in size—and lives exclusively on gorgonian sea-fans, as its coloration and physical features expertly mimic the coral for camouflage. [4]