Once in a great, great while, you might see one fast to the rocks if the tide is very low. And today was that lucky day.
I found one whose tube feet were still pretty active, and I'd seen a few sea palms with mussels on their holdfasts earlier, so I carried my friend along until I found another enmusseled sea palm. Then I applied A to B, to see what happens.
Interestingly the arms as a whole don't seem to do anything. It was all about more and more tube feet coming into range to grab on.
1 of 3.
closer. 2 of 3.
worst image of the lot. Carrying my friend by its sea-palm handle to the rocky area where sea stars live. 3 of 3.
I semi-promise this is the last one I'll take of one just on a rock not up to anything.
Not too windy, but the water was... ermmm... turbid. If the water were clear and I had a big, fancy camera, we could make posters out of it with "best friends forever!" underneath and sell it to teenage girls. Well, the weird ones who appreciate creatures other than bunnies and kitties.
blend in
This is 320K at full size. It looks very good to me when resized to fill my screen.This site shrank the maximum size to 1024xsomething and 100K. Still not bad.
one on the right is Pisaster brevispinus. for completeness, our usual sea star there is Pisaster ochraceus
The underside. I think I read that the top is called the aboral side (presumably the bottom being the oral side). I don't know whether they do dorsal and ventral as well -- maybe the terminology is bilateral-specific or something.
