Live Sea Urchin at Port Eynon: video clip

I have talked about and photographed, the Sea Potato sea urchins – Echinocardium cordatum Pennant – that live on the shores of the Gower Peninsula in earlier postings. This is the first time I have been able to capture one in a short video clip, very much alive and actively moving its spines, with two of the small pink bivalved molluscs (Tellimya ferruginosa Montagu) that live commensally in the burrow of the urchin still in position  among the spines at the rear end of the animal near the anus.

For more information about the Sea Potato and other urchins click the links below to earlier postings on Jessica’s Nature Blog:

Living ‘Sea Potato’ sea urchin from Port Eynon

Sea Potatoes from Gower

Sea Potato sea urchin shell

Live ‘Sea Potato’ sea urchin emerging from its burrow

Tube feet on starfish & sea urchins

Green sea urchin on Worms Head Causeway

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7 Replies to “Live Sea Urchin at Port Eynon: video clip”

  1. Pingback: Living ‘Sea Potato’ sea urchin at Port Eynon | Jessica's Nature Blog

  3. That’s really extraordinary – shows how little we really know about the world we live on, I’ve found quite a few sea urchin shells but never seen them in their live state. Those molluscs are pretty wild as well..:>

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  4. thanks, Rolling Harbour. It was great seeing it. I had no idea that the spines were moved in that kind of rhythmic way. The flattened, spatulate spines on the underneath are used for digging the burrow in the wet sand.

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  5. I have found living sea urchins washed up on the beach before but I have never seen the spines all moving previously. The commensal molluscs were on several of the specimens I found last week, and one of them also had a small crustacean like an isopod crawling through the spine forest too. I haven’t identified the creature yet but its presence is intriguing because the textbooks only ever refer to a small amphipod crustacean (Urothoe marina Bate) living in association with this sea urchin – and this was not that.

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