Ophiura luetkenii (Lyman 1860)

How to Distinguish from Similar Species: O. sarsii is very similar but it has separated arm comb bristles with pointed tips and the animal is usually gray without stripes on the arms.

Biology/Natural History: May live in dense aggregations. These eat benthic animals and carrion. They capture food by racing after it using their arms, then looping an arm around it and bringing it to the mouth where the jaws tear off pieces of flesh while the arms pull the food away. Predators include the Dover sole, copper rockfish, and sand star Luidia foliolata. It has a rapid escape response from L. foliata.

Lives in or on the surface of silty sand or gravel.

Geographical Range: Bering Sea, Alaska to Baja California. They appear to be uncommon in California.

This arms of this brittle star insert into notches in the central disk, bordered by arm combs. The oral shields are widest near the middle of the shield. The spines of the arm combs are broad and blunt and touch one another from side to side, almost like small marginal plates along the edge of the arm notch. The radial shields are longer than wide and about 1/5 the diameter of the central disk. Proximally they are separated by a wedge of scales and distally they are separated by part of the dorsal arm plates. The arms are about 5-6x as long as wide. The large aboral plates on the arms are wedge-shaped and touch one another rather than having smaller plates in-between. The color is variable. Dorsally it is usually a mottled brown or gray, often with brown or gray bands on the arms. Ventrally they are white. The arm spines are brown or gray at the base with white tips

Depth Range: Intertidal to 1265 meters; usually subtidal at least 10 meters.