A large heavy sea star with a raised net of blunt tubercles, on Galapagos sand and rubble.
To about 20 cm across. Five arms on a raised cushion-like disc, the whole animal covered in blunt rounded knobs.
The chocolate chip sea star is the pair: sharp black cones there, blunt knobs here.
Nought to ten metres, at about an eighth of surveyed tropical eastern Pacific sites and averaging six per transect. Recorded from the Galapagos, the Gulf of California and coastal Ecuador. Harmless.
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.