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Ocean animals

Velvet coral

Learn how it looks and lives, then go and meet it.

Velvet coral in its habitat (illustration)

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An illustration based on the real animal.

A little discovery to share.

It forms brown to greenish-brown colonies that spread over surfaces like a crust.

Source鳥羽水族館 — ベルベットサンゴ

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THE REAL WORLD

The real Velvet coral

Scientific name
Psammocora profundacella
Japanese name
ベルベットサンゴ
Group
Ocean animals
Class
Hexacorallia
Order
Scleractinia
Family
Psammocoridae
Genus
Psammocora
Facts about the real animal.
01

It is found in the Indo-West Pacific, and also off South Africa and Mexico.

鳥羽水族館 — ベルベットサンゴ
02

It forms brown to greenish-brown colonies that spread over surfaces like a crust.

鳥羽水族館 — ベルベットサンゴ
03

Its surface is so smooth that it does not look like a coral.

鳥羽水族館 — ベルベットサンゴ

Where the Velvet coral has been recorded

World map with dots where the Velvet coral has been recorded
Each dot marks a place with observations or specimens shared on GBIF. Some records are of animals that strayed or were brought by people, so the dots are not always where the animal lives.

Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF

Where it livesWorld oceansAfricaNorth AmericaOcean

Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.

Names around the world

简体中文
深室沙珊瑚
繁體中文
表面沙珊瑚

Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.

Sources and how we check

We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.

The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.

This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.

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