leather or fire coral captures a little worm

I love night dives. All these critters get attracted to your lights and dive bomb everything in site. This leather coral "captured" this guy. what is it?

taken in Papua New Guinea:

I'll leave the worm ID to leslie. But are you sure that is a leather coral. It looks like fire coral to me.

You know -- you may be right. I didn't take a close look at the coral, and for some reason just assumed that it was a leather. A fire coral makes more sense.

Hi Eric,

The leather coral tendrils typcically have tiny tentacles at the ends and are thick and dark, while the fire corasl tentacles are clear, have nothing at the end, and have stinging nematocysts.

Cheers

James

Very nice worm! I was admiring it on your website the other day. It belongs to the family Nereididae but I can't tell what genus. It's an epitoke. Epitokes are mature worms in which part of the body is modified so they can swim up into the plankton to spawn. Attached is an image of another nereid epitoke to better show the modified rear body.

In another image on your website you have a pygmy seahorse with worms wrapped around it & the nearby coral. Those worms belong to the family Syllidae and like the nereid are epitokes. They either just crawled out of the hiding places to swim up & spawn or were in the plankton & have just settled out again.

Leslie - here's that pygmy shot you mentioned:

In what do you house your microscope?

Kevin