Seaweeds provide food for such grazers as snails, sea hares and urchins. Sponges, sea squirts, mussels, fanworms and barnacles filter tiny food particles from the water. Sea anemones and their relatives are hungry predators. These animals, in turn, are eaten by the flamboyant nudibranch slugs and other snails. Hunters of the seashore capture their prey in different ways.
Sea stars use hundreds of tube feet.
Worms and snails may drill or harpoon their prey, while some crabs use powerful crushing claws. Try to find them in Aquariums 15 and 16. Animals in the Camouflage Tank are disguised to look like their surroundings. The richest habitat along the California rocky shores is the kelp forest. Kelp grows up to two feet a day and provides attachment, shelter and food for a complex community of plants and animals.