Starfish in military history. Three ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name "HMS Starfish": an A-class destroyer launched in 1894; an R-class destroyer launched in 1916; and an S-class submarine launched in 1933 and lost in 1940. In the World War II, Starfish sites were large-scale night-time decoys created during The Blitz to simulate burning British cities. Starfish Prime was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States on 9 July 1962. Starfish Starfish or sea stars are star-shaped echinoderms belonging to the class Asteroidea. Common usage frequently finds these names being also applied to ophiuroids, which are
Starfish Invasive Species Specialist Group's list of the world's 100 worst invasive species. Starfish may be preyed on by conspecifics, other starfish species, tritons, crabs, fish, gulls and sea otters. Their first lines of defence are the saponins present in their body walls, which have unpleasant flavours. Some starfish such as "Astropecten polyacanthus" also include powerful toxins such as tetrodotoxin among their chemical armoury, and the slime star can ooze out large quantities of repellent mucus. They also have body armour in the form of hard plates and spines. The crown-of-thorns starfish is particularly unattractive to potential predators, being heavily defended