Mysterious ‘Sea Alien’ Identified as Basket Star (Video)

Millions of social media users have seen the video of an alien-like sea creature with about 100 moving arms that was recently reeled in by a fisherman in Singapore. After all the attention it received, experts have said that the odd-looking organism caught by Ong Han Boon is actually a relatively common Basket Star.
10/15/2014
Updated:
9/1/2015

Millions of social media users have seen the video of an alien-like sea creature with about 100 moving arms that was recently reeled in by an individual in Singapore.

After all the attention it received, experts have said that the odd-looking organism caught by Ong Han Boon is actually a Basket Star.

The conclusion is ending the stream of guesses and radical theories that emerged since Boon shared the video online. He hoped his friends and family would offer some insight into the species but initially he didn’t have much luck.

Even Boon believed he had either reeled in an alien or a mutant sea creature. He told a local radio station “I’ve had quite a few odd things come out of the ocean, but I have never seen anything like this before in my life. It had all these arms waving around.”

Basket sea stars can live up to approximately 65 hundred feet below sea level but typically they’re found anywhere from 50 to 500 feet under the ocean’s surface. They’re usually spotted near mud or around rocky areas.