Palmiskenea skenei

David Kipling Erect branching bryozoan, 25m deep off Falmouth, tideswept reef. Omalosecosa ramulosa or Palmiskenea skenei?

Keith Hiscock I would have recorded without further thought Omalosecosa - but do correct me if I am being too 'knee-jerk'.

David Kipling That was my reaction too, but then I saw a picture Kerry Lewis posted ...

Nick Owen Omalosecosa ramulosa. Beautiful big specimens. How long do the colonies persist? There are some nice big ones on the W2R Project boulder reef off Ringstead that can only be a year old. The biggest of the ones off Falmouth were maybe twice the size. What's overgrowing the one in the background?

Kerry Lewis What = big here? Mine was about the size of a 10p piece.

David Kipling You can get a sense of scale (I think) by looking at the lophophores ... I think these should be a standard/fixed size, with the colony growing by increasing the number of them. I'm rubbish at sizing UW, I'll let Nick comment as to how big the big colonies were!

Nick Owen Bit bigger than a 10p piece - the proper ones that replaced florins in 1969, not these wee ones we use now. Yes, good point about lophophores as scalars, David, The alternative is to make up a scale and cart it about, deploying it in pics as needed. Heh. The ones we see in Dorset are about the size of the new 10p.

Nick Owen PS Simnias everywhere on the dive including bigger ones with red stripes on Eunicella. Thought of you, Keith.

George Brown Certainly don't want to contradict Nick but the branches don't look skinny enough to be Omalosecosa. Local variation?