At the Gateway of Love and Longing.                                                                                                                Meher Spiritual Centre, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

 Ocean Soup and The Garden of Live Flowers:

In the "undisturbed waters" off Southeast North Carolina.

The polyps of the Muricea pendula wave in the currents that sweep through the wreck of the Normania in this photo taken by Julep Gillman-Bryan. Muricea p. is a branching colonial soft coral in the Subclass of Octocorallia, distinguished by the eight tentacles extending from each polyp as the animal feeds upon passing organisms brought to it by the currents. Like other corals they are sessile, anchored to rocky scarps that form Southeast North Carolina’s “hardbottom” offshore reefs, or the many artificial reefs and shipwrecks rise into the currents from the ocean floor. Muricea p. branches along a single plane and can reach sizes of 50cm x 50 cm. This is the life of our ocean; another world just over the horizon from where we live. And it begs us to do all we can to nurture it as we would our neighbours, our community.

https://www.dnr.sc.gov/.../octocoral.../Muricea_pendula.htm