Can someone please identify this?

[Samalolo]

Found off the kona coast .. some type of sand dollar maybe?

Aloha,
Sam

 

[scubapolly]

Nope, that is a coral....I'll wait for one of the Pacific gurus to tell you the species.

 

[Samalolo]

weird .. it was just laying in the middle of a large sand patch all by itself.

 

[scubapolly]

I might be wrong, but my guess would be that it was broken off, and you just happened to find it in the sand. Wait and see what someone more wise than I wages in.

 

[Vie]

Looks like some kind of mushroom coral - maybe Fungia scutaria?

 

[Samalolo]

http://whelk.aims.gov.au/coralsearch/html/101-200/Species pages/182.htm

Yep, looks like Fungia scutaria

Mahalo!

 

[Vie]

`A `ole pilikia

 

[jonix]

i think it's similar to the thing just beside the juvenile eel in this pic i took a few weeks back

so that thing is a coral?

 

[Vie]

The picture in post #1 is the calcareous skeleton of the coral.

 

[donnyb]

Hawaiian name Ko-a-Kohe, the Mushroom coral is the only free living single coral polyp. Used by the ancient hawaiians as a sanding block when building canoes.
I believe that one in #1 is alive, tentacles retracted. Dead ones are bone white.
Link to a image of one feeding: http://www.wantphoto.com/portfolio/fineart/fav06.html#image