Black coral - Retriever Seamount

Description:

Description: English: A small colony of the black coral Bathypathes at 2004 meters depth on Retriever Seamount. The black coral polyps are so small, and the tissue on the skeleton so thin, that the tentacles appear to arise directly from the branches. In this group of black corals, the polyps are stretched out along the branch so that instead of a ring of 6 tentacles surrounding the mouth, the tentacles arise in pairs, with the central pair flanking a raised cone that bears the mouth. Date: 7 September 2014, 02:05:27. Source: https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/ex1404/logs/photolog/. Author: National Oceanographic and Atmospheric AdministrationImage courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Exploring Atlantic Canyons and Seamounts 2014.