Floating Anemones
Hey everyone, over the past month our iNaturalist contributors have more than tripled! We are all so grateful and excited to see what you find!
This week I wanted to talk about one of the less well-known creatures that live at the ocean’s surface, the floating sea anemones. These anemones are in the genus Actinecta and they don’t have a common name, they are only referred to as their scientific names. These creatures have a float at their base that allows them to live at the surface of the ocean, hanging upside down and catching prey with their tentacles. They are a pretty rare find but sometimes they can be found in the open ocean or washed ashore.
Happy Halloween weekend!
-Ari Puentes
Comments
Never heard of these. Are they confined to the North Atlantic?
We have not seen them on our projects: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/blue-community-s-afr
From what I can see they are quite localized; https://inaturalist.org/taxa/1210955-Actinecta
Hi Tony! They are not commonly found, therefore their exact distribution is unknown but they are more commonly seen in the Southern Hemisphere.
I had never heard of these until today, because I got stung by one! I was just taking photos of a scorpion fish when I felt a painful stinging on my upper lip and also my cheek on the other side, and on the way to the lifeguard, I could feel it swelling up more. Got antihistamines and hope in a day or two it'll go down.
Not once in my 5 years of snorkeling and skindiving (I go nearly every day, I live in the Canary Islands) has this ever happened, hell, I didn't even know they existed! 😚
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