Infamous Star Sand Beach Taketomi

It’s all in the name: Hoshizuna no Hama, or Star Sand Beach, located on Taketomi Island in Okinawa, Japan, is filled not with sand made up of rocks and minerals, but instead with microscopic star-shaped particles. These tiny particles have no relation to the stars in the night sky, nor to the starfish wash up on shore with them. Star sand is actually the remnants of tiny organisms, a group of animals belonging to the subphylum Foraminifera. Their scientific name is Baculogypsina sphaerulata, but marine biologists call them “living sand,” although technically the discarded exoskeletons of the microscopic animals that wash up by the millions on shore are just the dead remains. This particular species of “forams” is found only in East Asia along the Pacific Ocean in coral reefs, making Star Sand Beach and the other coastlines where B. sphaerulata live and die rare treasures.#beach #ishigaki #japan #okinawa #stars