What Is This Creature? by photosynthesis

Photography • Sea/Undersea • posted on Nov 16, 2016

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Description

We saw several of these on a beach near Brookings, Oregon. This is the underside - the other side was an orange color & was soft & fleshy. Some kind of mollusk, I assume, but haven't been able to identify it. Can anyone tell me what this is?

Comments (8)

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X-PaX

11:11AM | Wed, 16 November 2016

I did not know what it is but it looks very interesting.
Very nice capture.

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t13v0m

11:37AM | Wed, 16 November 2016

Possibly a gumboot chiton, Cryptochiton stelleri.

photosynthesis

12:09PM | Wed, 16 November 2016

Thanks, after looking it up, I think you're right. We were thinking it might be a chiton, but all the images of chitons I found had segmented plates & the fleshy covering of this particular species covers those plates, which threw me off. This one & the others we saw on the beach that day were roughly 10 -12 inches long, which matches the description for this species.

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