Example 6c

All images copyright protected, © Doug Segar and Elaine Stamman Segar.

A sea pen with its polyps fully extended. This sea pen is not the same species as the one that is home to the porcelain crab shown on the previous screen. However, it is similar in size and color and probably hosts its own species of commensal crab, shrimp or other animals. Imagine how hard it would be to see a commensal species on this 30-40 cm long sea pen if it was, as the porcelain crab above, only a few millimeters in size and perfectly camouflaged.