Cream with blunt black spines like chocolate chips, on eastern Pacific sand and rubble.
To about 23 cm. A tan disc carrying a symmetrical pattern of sharp black conical spines. Adults are raised and domed; juveniles are flat with proportionally shorter spikes.
The Panamic cushion star is the pair and the knobs settle it: blunt and rounded there, sharp black cones here.
Surface to a hundred and eighty-three metres, at about a sixth of surveyed tropical eastern Pacific sites and averaging seven per transect. It is endemic to the tropical eastern Pacific.
Harmless, though the spines are genuinely sharp.
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.