Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 11
A hunting convict snake eel,
Elapsopis versicolor
, writhes swiftly across the bot-
tom. These snake eels imitate the air-breathing and highly poisonous sea snakes.
spreading branches of our family tree we fi nd other slightly more distant
relatives. Some of these, unlikely as it may seem, are sea urchins.
3
Jostling crowds of large sea urchins, known as fi re urchins, are common
at Lembeh. They form dense clusters, swarming with surprising speed across
the sand and sucking up small creatures from the bottom as they go. Their
spines, some long and striped and others purple-black, radiate out in all
directions to protect their plump (and delicious) bodies.
As I peered down at this carpet of spines I immediately discovered why
these roistering ragamui ns are called fi re urchins. Their bodies, glimpsed
among the spines, are colored the fi ery red of hot coals. The red patches are
outlined in electric blue spots that glow like sparks.
How do we know that these sea urchins share an evolutionary kinship
with scuba divers and merchant bankers? At the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury the English zoologist Walter Garstang compared the early embryonic
stages of vertebrates with the early stages of sea urchins, starfi sh, and other
echinoderms. He found that vertebrates and echinoderms have similar
