A smooth-skinned orange or red sea star with short blunt arms, common under ledges in the temperate south.
To about 18 cm. Soft, spongy and reddish with very large respiratory papulae; the extended tube feet give a living animal a velvety surface, and the large marginal plates only show on a dried specimen.
The firebrick sea star, which shares the coast, carries conspicuously enlarged orange marginal plates.
Nought to sixty metres, commonest at moderately exposed sites, recorded at about a third of Australian survey sites. It forages on encrusting sponges, sea squirts and bryozoans.
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.