A metre of sticky tentacles lying flat on the sand, with a household living in it.
A large anemone with an oral disc to about 80 cm, spread flat on soft sediment with the column buried, the surface covered in short blunt tentacles of uneven length in green, brown, grey or, occasionally, a fluorescent yellow-green. The tentacles are noticeably stickier than those of the other host anemones and it retracts fast and completely, pulling the whole disc down into the sand.
It is a habitat entry. Haddon’s carpet is a host for several anemonefish — the saddleback anemonefish is the usual one here, and Clark’s anemonefish uses it too — and for the porcelain anemone crab, the glass anemone shrimp and juvenile cardinalfish, and a single anemone on open sand will hold four or five species at once. The anemonefish keeps its mucus coat adjusted so it is not recognised as prey, which the crab and the shrimp do differently and independently. Recorded from the shallows to about 30 m. It is the anemone a diver kneels on.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
