Magical creatures
AN APPRECIATION OF STARFISH
Excited screams from the sandy beach beyond the headland blend with the cries of young swallows circling the cliffs. The Cornish summer is ebbing, sending nature into an electrified frenzy. Time is running short for everything, including my hopes to find a cushion starfish ‘nest’. Unlike the bold starfish illustrations in children’s books, the cushion star only comes in understated shades of buff-brown and green, its five stumpy arms poking out from a puffy central disc. It cannot compete with the dustbin-lid proportions of the spiny starfish or the tangerine brightness of the common starfish, yet I love nothing better than lifting seaweed to uncover constellations of scattered cushion stars.
Larger starfish species prise open mussels, reducing them to soup, but cushion stars are gentle scavengers. They sail smoothly over the rock, gliding on scores of hydraulically controlled tube feet, the frenetic movement that propels them hidden from sight. They eat anything they find, from algae and sponge to crab larvae and molluscs.
A few larger cushion stars have anchored themselves to the rocks, seeming unwilling to budge. These are females: all cushion stars are male when they’re small, changing gender as they grow. Last week, between the arms of two cushion starfish, I noticed the tiniest orange glow. Using my camera’s magnification I could see capsules, hundreds of them, with something resembling a balled-up fist inside each one. Could the cushion stars be guarding their eggs? By my next visit, the orange patch was gone.
I sense it’ll soon be too late in the season to find more eggs. Oystercatchers trill and flit around me while I search pools lined with fluffy pink forests of coral weed. I find dozens of cushion stars, but no patches of orange.
There’s a change in the sound of the shore. A sloshing grows nearer as the tide seeps in. With time running out, I crouch in a shallow pool to turn a stone. The underside reveals a community of lobed sponges and lightbulb sea squirts. A brittle star, another cousin of the cushion star, sways over the stone’s edge on its long, feathered arms. In the centre of it all is a tiny glow of bright orange.
In a second, I’m almost lying in the pool, positioning my camera. Holding my breath. The colours blur and waver on screen until they snap into focus revealing an exploding galaxy of mini stars, each one a glowing orange sunrise of pure joy. Baby cushion stars are bursting out from a central pile, their tube feet stretching out, disproportionately long against their microscopically small bodies.
Some just-hatched pinprick cushion stars are already venturing forth from their birthplace into a vast ocean of possibility. I watch them until the incoming waves lift the seaweed and a flood of new water chills my knees.
It’s time to replace this starry universe and wish it well.