Here is a piece of the seagrass Zostera marina; it is brown, rather than green, because it is decaying. Attached is an animal called an anemone (ah-nem-oh-knee), a relative of the jellyfish.

Seagrass beds are coastal habitats that serve a number of important functions, such as providing shelter to immature fish, crabs, and other animals, and protecting shorelines from erosion by dampening waves and trapping sediment.

Image taken by Lisa Drake with an Olympus^® DP-10 digital camera attached to an Olympus^® SZX12 dissecting microscope. Original magnification 10x; the leaf section is approximately 5 mm across. Seagrass collected in October 2001 from the York River, Virginia.