Animal profile

Basket Star

Gorgonocephalus arcticus

OphiuroideaCold, current-swept seabeds of the North Atlantic and Arctic

Field profile

A brittle star whose five arms branch repeatedly into a dense tangle of fine tendrils. Spread out, the arm net can span half a metre or more. It feeds by filtering drifting plankton from moving water.

Published field notes

2023-09-24

Basket Star

The basket star unfurls into a net at night

By day it sits balled up on a sponge or coral. After dark, in a current, it opens its repeatedly branched arms into a broad mesh and catches drifting plankton on hooked spines along the tendrils.

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