Northwest Waters

Metridium farcimen

Big and billowing, the plumose anemone comes in many colors: white, orange, tan or brown. They can grow up to 2 feet tall and live for 100 years. They especially love the pilings underneath docks around Puget Sound – so we put some in Northwest Waters just for them!

They can shoot out tiny stinging cells from their tentacles to snag small zooplankton to eat, and long stinging threads from their gut to defend against predators like sea stars.

All anemones can move across the seafloor when they need to using a muscular wave across their foot. But you might not notice – their speed is around 3/8 inch in 3 minutes.

Cribrinopsis fernaldi

Crimson anemones actually come in a range of colors, from white to yellow to pink – but you can always spot it by the red zigzagging bands on its tentacles. This anemone has a give-and-take relationship with the candy stripe shrimp. The shrimp takes a meal of dead skin and food waste from the anemone, and in return gives the anemone protection from other shrimp that try to nibble it.

Without teeth, anemones swallow their prey whole, later spitting out whatever they can’t digest.

Urticina piscivora

Some anemones pull in bits of food, but this anemone has strong enough tentacles to bring down small fish and shrimps. Immobilizing its prey by shooting out tiny toxic harpoons, the anemone then passes the prey into its central mouth.

The exception is the little painted greenling fish, which can find shelter in the middle of the anemone.
Growing up to 8 inches tall, these anemones live on reefs and pilings from Alaska to California. They can grow larger when food is plentiful, and shrink when it’s scarce.

Sebastes spp

There more than 100 species of rockfish in many shapes, sizes, colors and patterns – and many live in Puget Sound. In Northwest Waters we have brown, black, copper, vermillion, china, quillback, tiger and canary rockfish – look for the interactive screen near the habitat to help you identify each one.

Depending on the species, rockfish grow between 5 and 41 inches long. They live in kelp forests, rocky reefs or the seafloor in the north Pacific ocean, with a few species also living in the south Pacific and Atlantic. They eat plankton, fish and crustaceans, and are one of the longest-lived fish, living up to 200 years old!

Platichthys stellatus

This bizarre-looking fish begins life in the usual fishy way, with one eye on each side of its head. After a few weeks, one eye migrates—actually moves!—over the top of its head to the other side to accommodate sideways life on the seafloor.

Distinctively banded fins make the starry flounder easy to identify. Also known as a “rough jacket,” this flounder’s star-shaped scales (tubercles) give it such a rough texture that its skin was once used as sandpaper.