The Japanese Society of Systematic Zoology, Japan
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West of Japan, approximately 340 km off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture, lies the Joban Seamount Chain, a chain of deep-sea mountains that includes the Iwaki Seamount, whose valley lies at a depth of approximately 5,600 meters.
On August 9, 2009, Dr. Keiichi Kakui, Hokkaido University, found nine fragments of a previously unknown coral in the catch bag of a beam trawl, a benthic net used to collect organisms living in the benthal, the bottom region.
The largest piece of the colony was about 8.5 cm high and 7.0 cm wide and branched out almost in a plane without anastomoses.
The branching was irregular, almost right-angled near the base and acute-angled in the branches.
No information on the total size of the colony is available.
Retracted autozooids were sparsely distributed on the trunk on one side of the colony, at intervals of about 5–10 mm on the branches.
Two to three autozooids formed groups at the tips of the branches.
After landing, the colony fragments were bright red in color, with the coenchyme on the branches pale pink.
Etymology. The specific name “Meraboshi” is a Japanese noun that has been handed down since ancient times on the Pacific coast of Japan and refers to the Canopus of the Argo constellation.
In this region, Canopus is a rare star that can only be observed under certain seasonal and weather conditions.
This red star is worshipped as a god who controls sea conditions, and when it is visible near the eastern horizon, the sea is said to become rough (Nojiri 1957: 257–264).
The coral described lives in the eastern coastal region of this area and has bright red autozooids, hence the specific name “meraboshi.”
Hemicorallium meraboshi is another impressive example of how deep-sea corals are every bit as brilliantly colorful as their tropical stone coral counterparts.
Literature reference:
Nonaka, Masanori & Hanahara, Nozomi & Kakui, Keiichi. (2023).
A New Species of Coralliidae (Cnidaria: Octocorallia) Collected from Eastern Japan.
Species Diversity. 28. 231-243. 10.12782/specdiv.28.231.
© 2023 The Japanese Society of Systematic Zoology. This is an open-access article distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which allows unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium and format, provided the original work is properly cited. The content of this article is licensed under CC BY 4.0 unless otherwise stated in a source citation for the material.
On August 9, 2009, Dr. Keiichi Kakui, Hokkaido University, found nine fragments of a previously unknown coral in the catch bag of a beam trawl, a benthic net used to collect organisms living in the benthal, the bottom region.
The largest piece of the colony was about 8.5 cm high and 7.0 cm wide and branched out almost in a plane without anastomoses.
The branching was irregular, almost right-angled near the base and acute-angled in the branches.
No information on the total size of the colony is available.
Retracted autozooids were sparsely distributed on the trunk on one side of the colony, at intervals of about 5–10 mm on the branches.
Two to three autozooids formed groups at the tips of the branches.
After landing, the colony fragments were bright red in color, with the coenchyme on the branches pale pink.
Etymology. The specific name “Meraboshi” is a Japanese noun that has been handed down since ancient times on the Pacific coast of Japan and refers to the Canopus of the Argo constellation.
In this region, Canopus is a rare star that can only be observed under certain seasonal and weather conditions.
This red star is worshipped as a god who controls sea conditions, and when it is visible near the eastern horizon, the sea is said to become rough (Nojiri 1957: 257–264).
The coral described lives in the eastern coastal region of this area and has bright red autozooids, hence the specific name “meraboshi.”
Hemicorallium meraboshi is another impressive example of how deep-sea corals are every bit as brilliantly colorful as their tropical stone coral counterparts.
Literature reference:
Nonaka, Masanori & Hanahara, Nozomi & Kakui, Keiichi. (2023).
A New Species of Coralliidae (Cnidaria: Octocorallia) Collected from Eastern Japan.
Species Diversity. 28. 231-243. 10.12782/specdiv.28.231.
© 2023 The Japanese Society of Systematic Zoology. This is an open-access article distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which allows unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium and format, provided the original work is properly cited. The content of this article is licensed under CC BY 4.0 unless otherwise stated in a source citation for the material.
