The Pink Sea Fan is a pink or white soft coral that looks more like a plant than an animal. It has a broad base and a column from which wart-like branches grow in a shape of a fan and this is why it has its name the ‘Sea Fan’. It is a protected species that can be found in waters in the south west of England where it attaches itself onto large boulders just below the surface of the seabed. It often lives in waters deeper than fifteen metres where there are strong currents.

The Pink Sea Fan is made up of thousands of identical ‘polyps’. Polyps are small organisms which have a mouth and lots of tentacles and this group of polyps forms a fan-shaped colony. The colony can reach a width of forty centimetres, but it can take up to fifty years or more for it to reach this size. Each individual polyp forms a hard case around itself which looks like a wart-like bump. These wart-like bumps can be seen all along the branches. Polyps catch food by using their tentacles which have stinging cells called ‘nematocysts’. The stinging cells stun prey and the tentacles carry the food to the polyp’s mouth.

It is believed that the larvae of Pink Sea Fans settle soon after hatching to develop into young Pink Sea Fans. Then they travel long distances by floating on water currents and only settle when they have found suitable areas to form new colonies or to be part of existing colonies.