Here is a shot of a pair of fire darts, using a square "fun house mirror" adapter for the housing. Just messing around with it, in a perfect shot (never happens) you would get 4 identical reflections, top, bottom, left and right. In any case enjoy.

Here is a nice little Pseudosimnia marginata (I think) from our recent Komodo trip. He is sitting on some soft coral. Enjoy.

Here is a nice (not so little) crinoid from Komodo. Crinoids are related to sea stars and urchins and have been around for hundreds of millions of years. Many of them are brightly colored (and they stick like mad to your wetsuit if you get too close, and somehow I always get too close). This guy is bright red/orange and yellow and contains pro-isocrinin one of the very few molecules from any sea creature that contains multiple bromines. How he decided to make the color and why is he colored is a mystery. In any case enjoy.

We did a bunch of black water dives on our recent Komodo trip. Here is a neat tiny jelly (don't have a clue) we found one night. Enjoy.

Here is a nice little blenny from our Komodo trip. Always want to draw a mustache on him. Enjoy.

Here is a nice little (maybe you can see eggs) sea star shrimp, Periclimenes soror from Komodo. These guys live on the bottom of sea stars. A key question is "does the shrimp actively seek a single type of sea star, or is he just floating around til he finds a home?" A paper by Oliffe at Berkeley set up some cool experiments to find out. They made a Y maze, one arm had water that was pumped from a tank that had a sea star in it, the other arm just plain water. In this experiment with 27 different shrimp each run 12 times and switching sides of the Y where the sea star was, the majority of the shrimp swam toward the host. The statistics were impressive (p=0.003) strongly suggesting that the shrimp could sense some chemical (unknown) that was in the water that came from the sea star.  Cool experiments. 

Here is a nice little Filogranella from Komodo. This is a reef building tube worm colony. These guys can form enormous (15 x 6 meter constructs) with many individuals. In any case, enjoy.

On our recent Komodo trip we did a bunch of black water dives. Here is another larval tube dwelling anemone. Cool creatures.

Here is a very tiny Clown Anemone Fish from Komodo. Very small guy (compare to the tentacles). Enjoy

I love feather duster type worms. Here is a cool one from our recent Komodo trip with friends. Amazingly (at least to me) these guys often have multiple pairs of eyes that allow them to sense me swimming up so they go shooting into their tubes. In any case enjoy.

Here is a nice little cuttlefish from our recent Komodo trip. As he/she moved around the colors kept changing to mimic the background. More on the science of that later, for now enjoy.

Here is a nice little worm (unkown to me) laying eggs on a blackwater dive in Komodo from our recent trip with friends. Enjoy.

Here is a nice little (and I mean little) ladybug amphipod from Komodo. There are at least 10 different versions of these guys (Nannette has them all on video) but I only shot a few. Ladybug amphipods are cousins of skeleton shrimp (another favorite). Unlike most amphipods, ladybugs are distinctive in that their bodies are laterally compressed, in other words, their bodies are "taller" than they are wide. In any case, enjoy this one.

Here is a nice little yellow sea cucumber, Colochirus robustus from Komodo. These guys have been used as food and medicine in China, Korea and Japan. They make some interesting small peptides (tiny proteins, 3-15 amino acids long). These have been reported to definitely modulate immune function (at least in mice). The graph shows how the peptides improve CD3 expression. In any case enjoy.

Here is a nice little Goniobranchus leopardus (I think) from Komodo sitting on the reef. These guys are good chemists. Mostly nudibranchs eat something toxic and sequester that poison to keep from being someone's lunch. These guys take a simple precursor, and successfully rearrange it into 5 other molecules all the while maintaining 3 different chiral centers (that. is like magic), and they do it at body temperature. To replicate the synthetic pathway, boiling in lye and then again in hydrochloric acid was necessary to get a piece of the way to the new molecule. In any case enough chemistry, enjoy.

Here is a nice little Christmas Tree worm growing on (or out of) some hard coral. Enjoy.

I really like squid. I know they aren't "special" but I still like them. From our recent Komodo adventure. Enjoy.

Another feather duster worm. Enjoy, from Komodo.

Here is a nice little mushroom coral shot in black and white (according to Olympus) and post processed to get a kind of retro BW look. Enjoy.

Here is a nice little flatworm (Pseudoceros susanae, I think) from Komodo crawling around on a sponge.  These guys are brightly colored presumably to advertise that they are poisonous like the nudibranchs they mimic or possibly as a way to attract a mate (hey look at my really cool colors). In any case, enjoy.

Here is a nice little Nembrotha purpureolineata (I think) laying eggs on the top of a leaf like sponge from our recent trip to Komodo with friends. These guys were quite abundant and quite often seen mating. I am fascinated with the colors of nudibranchs, how do they make/get such cool colors. The blue in this guy is likely the molecule shown in the inset which has been shown to be a potent antimicrobial against B. subtilis (and god knows we need new antibiotics). In any case enjoy.

Here is a nice little piece of a cool bubble tip anemone (Entamaea) from Komodo. They are fascinating beasties. In an interesting experiment, a group from the University of Indonesia (Depok) took live anemones and fed them either pieces of fish (grouper) or pieces of shrimp. Guess which one was easier to eat. Shrimp of course (I would have bet the fish was easier). In any case, enjoy.

We went diving yesterday with friends on the Giant Stride. Topside conditions were mostly amazing and the water was cold but nice to be back blowing bubbles. Photographically it was not exciting; even Biodome had minimal life, and not a single Hermessinda. I was playing with shallow DOF and color, here is a nice little anemone from Biodome. Enjoy.

Here is a nice little Paracyathus stearnsi we found yesterday on our dive with friends. This is a stony coral that has been studied extensively to help understand how genes flow amongst beasties that stay where they are born and those that are planktonically dispersed (stearnsi). In general species that are widely dispersed will have larger genetic variability than those that stay at home. In any case enjoy.

Here is a nice little blenny from Komodo who has a parasite attached to him. Not fun I suspect. Also I think you can see an out of focus ladybug at the left of the frame. Enjoy.

Here is a nice not so little Spanish Dancer from Komodo. This guy was probably 3-4 inches long (75 to 100 mm for those of you unfamiliar with the US Customary Units) and quite striking. I am always amazed at colors of nudibranchs. The inset shows the structure of the red color of Hexabranchus, and it is made in-house so to speak, nothing he eats has this molecule. In any case, enjoy.

Here is a nice little bobtail squid from a night dive in Komodo. These guys were things we all shot for a long time and then the fashion changed to more strange and unusual things. I think they still are quite pretty.  These guys are quite ingenious. They have a symbiotic bacteria (Vibrio fischeri) that inhabit the "light organ". The bacteria are luminescent and "hide" the squid from below by matching the light hitting the mantle. This is amazing camouflage (not so good on the sand). The chemistry of the light creation is the same as the firefly using luciferase as the catalyst. In any case, enjoy and as always if you want the paper about the chemistry let me know.

There are a million billion chromodoris/goniobranchus guys that look similar and I don't know which one this is except that he is pretty common. Here is a nice little one from Komodo. Enjoy.

Here is a nice little (tiny) warty frogfish juvenile from our recent Komodo adventures. He never ever looked at me, so I said what the heck just shoot him this way. Enjoy.

Here is a nice little feather duster worm from Komodo. I like the broken symmetry especially the little curl near lower left. In any case, enjoy.

Here is a nice little eye of a cuttlefish. In an intriguing experiment some guys from Woods Hole set out to ask if cuttlefish use each eye for different things. Complex experimental setup that allowed them to see if the cuttler used one eye for finding prey and the other eye for looking for potential threats. It turns out that cuttlefish predominantly use their left eye for looking for threats and their right eye for finding and catching food. The statistics were quite significant (p<0.001). The authors suggest that this lateralization means specialized brain functions for food or flight are similarly laterized. In any case enjoy and if you want a copy of the paper let me know.

Here is a nice little Coryphella/Orientella/Flabellina trilineata on a new pearlescent white stage from our dive yesterday with friends. Unusually for our favorite haunts near Palos Verdes, nudibranch density was very low and NO Hermissendas anywhere. The Coryphella eat hydroids. In an interesting but perhaps predictable study from Woods Hole, more hydroids were eaten at low nudibranch density and prey per nudibranch was maximum with very low nudi density. This is perhaps due to competition for the "best" hydroid polyps between the nudis. In any case enjoy.

Using glass stages again after a hiatus using just felt. Here is a Spanish Shawl from our dive yesterday on the Giant Stride with friends. Enjoy.

Today's nudibranch is Ancula gibbosa that Dana found for me last week here in California. They are neat little guys and here he is on the black dichroic glass stage. Unfortunately for these guys, there is a copepod (Splanchnotrophus willemi) that thinks the nudibranch is a good place to live. The inset shows the copepod on the gills a different nudi (not my pic). So if you are diving and looking for nudibranchs, keep your eye out for a possible hitchhiker.