Spiny Starfish

Photo: Federico Stefanelli · CC BY-NC

The spiny starfish is the dominant large predatory echinoderm on Gjipe's reef, with individuals up to 70 centimetres across patrolling the shallow boulder zone and attacking mussels, bivalves, and even sea urchins with methodical patience. They are capable of everting their stomach to digest prey outside the body, an adaptation that allows them to consume prey far too large to swallow whole. At Gjipe, where urchin populations are dense, spiny starfish play a critical ecological role as one of the few urchin predators capable of controlling grazing pressure on the algae communities.