In fact, the starfish has few natural predators, except for a few large shellfishes, and that is part of its success in survival. I do not find it beautiful, though it can be made to look so by clever photography. Images of the juvenile photographed from underneath as it sticks to the bot- tom of a clear glass tray show a lacelike radial symmetry, which delights until I read the caption underneath. It is very capricious, this love-hate relationship with other species. I have to take a further step, to understand the nature of fishness not only as an individual attribute but also in relation to reef communities.
Polyps exist in colonies.
Reefs exist as a congre- gation of coexisting species, many of which eat each other. Now one set of organisms gain ascendancy, as with the coral polyps that build the reef, then others take over, and it may be those organisms that destroy. The flip-flop mechanism of dominance is neither good nor bad in itself but simply the way things are. What whales make of the encounter is unknown. It is humans who say the whales are curious.