PORT ARANSAS, Texas – Rough surf at the beach might not be all that fun for swimming, but it does make for good creature hunting.
Some beachgoers have posted images of some cool creatures that have been spotted more frequently than usual this month — starfish.
One beachgoer posted some spectacular pictures on a Port Aransas photography page.
Christina said she took the pictures on July 12.
“There were several but this was the biggest and perfect with all the legs. Its body was the size of my palm,” she said.
Lacy Hendricks said her family also found quite a few of them over the July 4th weekend.
“We did a show and tell with the kids and put him back in the water,” Hendricks said. “They had a blast that night. It was a full moon. We found a live sand dollar, too, but I didn’t get a pic of it.”
“According to Mark Fisher, Science Director for the Coastal Fisheries Division of Texas Parks and Wildlife, it’s a gray sea star (Luidia clathrate). These sea stars live burrowed in the sand along the shore in the surf zone and beyond. When the surf is rough, like it has been with all this wind, they get churned up and wash up on the beach,” Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Social Media Specialist Julie Hagen said.
While they’re commonly called starfish, marine scientists prefer the more accurate moniker of sea stars — because, they’re not actually fish. Sea stars are echinoderms, which means spiny skin. While sea stars do have spiny skin, not all echinoderms do. There are more than 7,000 varieties of echinoderms including brittle stars, sand dollars, sea urchins and sea cucumbers. What they all have in common is radial symmetry.