Seeing Stars

A close friend of the family was visiting earlier this month. She is finishing her Masters in Marine Biology at San Francisco State. She has written her thesis about sea stars. Sea stars are common on the rocky shore of San Francisco Bay, but I have seen few enough in my lifetime in Florida. So we were all quite excited to find one down at St. Marks when we took her to the lighthouse. The tide was way out and this little guy had been left to bake on the beach. There was a muddy track to indicate it had tried to get back into the water, but had dried out before that was accomplished.

Our friend told us that sea stars are notorious for "playing possum." She put it back in the water, but when we passed by on the walk back to the car, it had not moved and was clearly dead.

Until I knew of her studies, I rather had assumed that all sea stars have five legs, but the ones she studied have six!