A strange creature at the bottom of the Sea

Travelling to the Bay of Bengal has always been a journey to discover something new. On the second day of my 13-day sea voyage, I saw a sea pen, a marine animal, and fish caught in fishermen’s nets.

At that time, I was in a fishermen’s trawler 35 kilometres off the coast of Barguna district in Bangladesh. The fishermen call it Rasgolla Misti, although they know little about it.

Some species of this sea pen look like ancient quill pens, which are made of bird feathers. That is why this creature is called a sea pen. The scientific name of this sea pen is Cavernularia Obesa. This creature is found in the Indo-Pacific region. This species is also called sea cactus. They are Bioluminescence.

Sea pens belong to the Pennatulacea order and the Octocorallia class. The body of the sea pen is very soft. They are found from shallow water to 20 thousand feet below the sea. However, they live more in the Benthic Zone of the sea floor.

Sea pens are filter feeders, meaning they have filtering organs in their bodies with which they eat organic matter, food particles, or tiny organisms from the water. Therefore, they are also called water-cleaning engineers of the ocean ecosystem. Depending on the species, these animals form separate colonies on the sea floor. They have 450 species in 35 genera and 14 families.

Sea pens are eaten by starfish and sea slugs or nudibranchs. Sea slugs look like snails. However, they do not have a hard shell.