Fireworks anemone

A tube anemone rather than a true anemone, and unmistakable once seen. Two sets of tentacles rise from a soft felty tube buried in the sediment: a long outer ring, often 20 to 30 cm across and sometimes more, that fans out in a wide starburst, and a shorter, paler inner tuft around the mouth. Colours run from white and cream through pink, apricot and lilac to deep violet and chocolate brown, and the two whorls are often different shades, which is what makes it look like a firework caught at full bloom.

Unlike rock anemones it never attaches to hard ground. It spins a tough, parchment-like tube of mucus and sediment that can run a metre down into sand or silt, and it withdraws into it in a blink. Around the Maltese islands look for it on the sandy and silty patches between rock and seagrass: the sand bowl at the Blue Hole and Coral Cave in Dwejra, the sandy gullies at Xatt l-Aħmar and Ċirkewwa, and the soft bottoms of the harbours, from about 5 m down past 40 m.

It is a slow, quiet animal that feeds on drifting plankton and tends to be more fully expanded at night or on dim days. Approach it like a nervous fish and it will stay open; barge in and you get a small hole in the sand.