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The white, or ghost anemone, Diadumene leucolena, is one of the most common and widespread sea anemones in the Chesapeake Bay, and is capable of tolerating its lower salinity waters. Despite its abundance in the Bay, it is often difficult to spot because of its small size and transparency. Diadumene leucolen a belongs to the Phylum Cnidaria and is thus related to the sea nettle, but is not a pelagic, free-floating organism. It also belongs to the Class Anthozoa, which includes the stony and soft corals. Its similarities to the common sea nettle, however superficial, are more obvious-as tides recede and the anemone is exposed to the air, it resembles little more than a gelatinous mass, but when submersed its flowerlike tentacles, equipped with stinging cells, extend, attracting prey to the mouth at the center of its body.
Anthozoans are polyps that do not pass through a medusal stage and that have mouths situated on an oral disk ringed with soft tentacles. Some species in this class are viviparous, which means that egg fertilization takes place inside the female's body, but others are oviparous, and shed their eggs into the water to be fertilized. Most anemones adhere to the bottom or some substrate but are not sessile, and can move very slowly using the round base of their columnar body stalk as a kind of pedal, like an inchworm. The ghost anemone also moves, but is most notable for its tiny size-usually no wider than a thumbnail, at most 1 ½ inches-and for its delicate, translucent tentacles, which may be tinged pink, or green, from algae growing on its smooth surfaces. The ghost anemone's mouth is surrounded by 60 tentacles, also each about ½ inches long, and when the anemone is threatened it discharges thin white strings of stinging cells. The ghost anemone's range extends along the East Coast from Maine to North Carolina, and in the West along the California coast. It occurs in protected shallow waters in the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries, and along pilings and on or beneath rocks.
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