There are more than 7,000 such species of echinoderms distributed everywhere, including sea urchins, sea stars, sea lilies, feather stars, snake stars, sand dollars… with extremely colorful colors and textures.

Most echinoderms are tiny and pretty, about the size of a finger to a hand. But there are also children up to two meters long or one meter in diameter. In which, the largest is the broken star and the price basket star, they are up to 70 – 80cm long and weigh 5 – 6kg; The smallest is the paddle star, about 1cm in diameter.

These animals are the sea creatures that appear in the most places on the planet and have an overwhelming number of hundreds, thousands of them in one place, as if they were distant stars!

They can live off the coast to a depth of ten thousand meters and are mainly found on coral reefs or thick seaweed beaches. There, each animal is like a flower blooming, moving smoothly and in layers.

Most of them are gentle, do not contain toxic substances, so they are often caught by fishermen and sailors as ornamental and gifts. After going ashore, exposed to the sun and rain, each animal will turn into a solid, white, dry skeleton.

The reason they gather around coral reefs is to eat seaweed, coral, and dregs. There are many with very long arms fluttering, undulating with the waves. If you don’t look closely, many people will think it is a dreamy fluttering seaweed.

They are so soft because they do not have a backbone, making it easy to stretch and wriggle. Particularly for the broken stars, it is easy to lose their arms to run away from the enemy.

There is a lot of attraction in echinoderms, especially starfish because they have symmetrical limbs, spines, and feathers that regularly rotate around a circular disc, and from here radiate a thousand colors and patterns.

In the marine food chain, starfish also play an important role when regulating algae, purifying water and being the food of many fish, shrimp, and sea turtles. From ancient times, people also used to collect starfish, especially those with lovely and cute shapes for decoration, while others used to make medicine.