| Red sea fan |
| Swiftia kofoidi |
 
Sea fans look a lot like plants with colorful,
forked "branches." But they’re actually animals, just like their
relatives, the corals and jellies. Sea fans are colonial animals—they’re
made up of many tiny, individual animals that work together as one.
The individual animals live along the sea fan’s "branches," and look
like little anemones. Using small, feathery tentacles, a sea fan feeds
by capturing tiny animal plankton that drift by in the currents.
| animal plankton |
| to 20 inches tall (51 cm) |
| deep sea floor, at depths from
130-6,000 feet (40-1,829 meters) |
| other sea fans; sea whips;
gorgonians; corals; sea anemones; jellies |
| Sea fans (and their relatives,
the sea whips and gorgonians) grow very slowly. In some areas,
fishing trawlers snag and destroy many sea fans in their nets—some
trawled near Nova Scotia were over six feet tall and 500 years old!
And, because sea fans and other slow-growing deep-sea animals
provide shelter for young fishes and other organisms, removing the
sea fans can affect many other species. |
| Sea fans’ stems are flexible, allowing them
to survive in strong currents. |
|
