---
title: Smooth Basket Star (Astroboa nuda)
scientific_name: Astroboa nuda
common_name: Smooth Basket Star
taxon: Brittle star
published: 2026-08-04T21:32:44.566Z
updated: 2026-08-20T17:11:25.932Z
tags: Smooth Basket Star, Astroboa nuda, Brittle star, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/echinoderms/brittle-star/smooth-basket-star
---

# Smooth Basket Star (*Astroboa nuda*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Brittle star (*Ophiuroidea*)
- **Size:** up to 1.5 m
- **Depth:** 5-40 m
- **Diet:** Planktivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Gorgonians and reef edges exposed to current

## How to recognise it

- arms branching over and over into a dense basket
- unfolds into a wide net at night, a tight ball by day
- perched on gorgonians or the edge of a wall

A brittle star whose five arms branch again and again into hundreds of fine, curling tips, forming a mesh that spreads to about 1.5 m (5 ft) across when fully open. Color is cream, tan or pale orange. By day the animal is unrecognisable as the same creature: the whole net contracts into a tight knotted ball wedged into a crevice or clamped around a gorgonian stem, no bigger than a fist and easily mistaken for a sponge.

At dusk it climbs to a raised perch - the top of a sea fan, a coral head, the lip of a wall - and unfolds into the current, holding the net at right angles to the flow. Passing zooplankton sticks to hooked microscopic spines on the arm tips, which then curl inward and pass the catch down to the mouth on the underside. Feeding is best on nights with current running, and the animal collapses its net if lit by a torch, so it is worth looking with the beam held to one side. Depth runs from about 5 to 40 m (16 to 130 ft) on Red Sea walls and drop-offs.

## Also known as

- **English:** Naked Basket Star
- **French:** Gorgonocéphale nu
- **German:** Nacktes Gorgonenhaupt
- **Portuguese:** Estrela-medusa-delicada
- **Russian:** Горгонова голова

## Scientific synonyms

- *Astroboa nigra* Döderlein, 1911
- *Astrophyton elegans* Koehler, 1905
- *Astrophyton nudum* Lyman, 1874
- *Astroraphis nudum* (Lyman, 1874)

## Range

Eastern Africa & Madagascar, Madagascar, Mozambique, Red Sea, Tanzania

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/echinoderms/brittle-star/smooth-basket-star)*
*Updated: August 20, 2026*