#4861 · 🪼 jellyfish, starfish, worms & co
Pea Urchin
🇳🇱 Zeeboontje ·Echinocyamus pusillus
🪼 Jellyfish, starfish, worms & co 📍 in the Netherlands
7 photos from iNaturalist (Creative Commons) · credits & licences
what is it?
Echinocyamus pusillus , commonly known as the pea urchin or green urchin , is a species of sand dollar, a sea urchin in the family Fibulariidae, native to the northeastern Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. It buries itself in gravel or coarse sand at depths down to about 1,250 m (4,000 ft).
base stats
Bars compare against all animals on log scales: up to 300,000 Dutch and 600,000 worldwide sightings (the most-seen species), 150 t (blue whale), 30 m and 400 years (Greenland shark).
fun facts
- Spotted 114 times in the Netherlands on iNaturalist: the #15 most seen of the jellyfish, starfish, worms & co in NL.
- 381 observations worldwide on iNaturalist.
- Scientifically named by Otto Friedrich Müller in 1776 (250 years ago).
fact sheet
- English
- Pea Urchin
- Nederlands
- Zeeboontje
- scientific name
- Echinocyamus pusillus
- class
- Echinoidea
- order
- Echinolampadacea
- family
- Fibulariidae
- sightings in NL
- 114
- sightings in Europe
- 333
- sightings worldwide
- 381
- GBIF records in NL
- 3,863
- weight
- —
- length
- —
- lifespan
- —
- named
- 1776 by Otto Friedrich Müller
Sources: iNaturalist taxon 354581, Wikidata Q2034701, GBIF 2279077, Wikipedia (EN), Wikipedia (NL). Intro text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).Updated 2026-10-24.