Here is a nice (maybe not nice) little pelagic nudibranch from a black water dive last night. They are terrible. Juveniles of P. bucephalum are found exclusively feeding on the bell of the hydromedusa Zanclea costata. At first the nudibranch is attached to the inside of the bell of the medusa with its very small foot. It sucks tissue from the ring, radial canals and manubrium of the medusa and grows from 1.6 mm to 11 mm in just ten days, while the medusa shrinks. When the slug is as big as the meduse, it starts to swim, eating the remaining parts, including the tentacles. See maybe not so nice. In any case enjoy. 

Here is a nice little G. kunei from the Banda Sea. These guys retract their gill when a shadow goes over them for protection. According to a 1919 paper from U Illinois college of Medicine the ability to retract is both temperature and pH sensitive. If the temps get too warm and pH goes down the gill retraction will not be possible. No idea what this means practically but doesn't sound good for the nudi. In any case, enjoy.

Leopard anemones (Antiparactis sp) often have teensy little leopard anemone shrimp on them. Not this one (we looked and looked). I am redoing my printing approach for my office (for the nth time where n is >10) to print square in remembrance of shooting 6x6 film on an old Hasselblad. My normal inclination is to shoot this with a black background but here I worked to get the background blue. In any case, enjoy.

Here is a nice little N. chamberlain from our recent Banda Sea trip. These guys can synthesize 

some interesting tambjamines which are a pain to make in the lab. The tambjamines are being investigated for leishmainiasis (from sand flies). They are one of only a few compounds that seem to work against the parasite. For the nudibranch it helps him not become some other nudi's lunch. In any case, enjoy.

Stop thief! Here is a nice little Phyllodesmium briareum from our Banda Sea trip.  These guys are both great thieves and masters of camouflage.  They look exactly like the soft coral they live in and they eat the coral, take the chloroplasts but most importantly keep the zooxanthellae that are photosynthetic.  They can live for long periods of time on sunlight alone.  You can see the chloroplasts as the brown bits on the cerata. In any case, enjoy

Here is a nice little S. psychedelicum from Banda. These are interesting in that they can sequester toxic bits from their food and concentrate them in their own tissues. Psychedelicum is brightly colored to warn fish do not eat (aposematism) while there is another guy S. nigropunctatum that is almost perfectly cryptic and has the same diet as psychedelicum. This might suggest that nigropunctatum can not accumulate the sponge toxins and so has to hide. Unfortunately for this hypothesis at least, both guys can concentrate the toxin by at least 5 fold compared to the sponge. Why is one guy cryptic and another one aposematic when both have significant toxicity is still not understood. In any case enjoy.

Here is a nice little "brain jelly" from a blackwater dive in Banda. These guys (Leuckartiara sp?) are unusual in that they are ambush predators according to a group in Rhode Island. They were put in tanks with a variety of prey and it appears that they are good at capturing small hydromedusa but barnacle larvae and rotifers were ingested but escaped. It took the Leuckartia about 7 min to capture and eat a small hydromedusa and they ignored a lot of small prey that have low caloric density in favor of (relatively) bigger ones. In any case enjoy.

Here is a nice little juvenile pleurobranch (I think) from Banda, sitting on a piece of dichroic glass. Pleurobranchs can be quite large; this one was about 1.5 inches (40mm or so) long. They are interesting critters, eating a variety of bits. In an interesting paper, a group at the Ford Institute for Medical Research (yes that Ford) built a maze shaped like a T.  They put food in one side of the short leg and let Pleurobranchs loose in the maze. 87% of the time they got to the T and went for the food. Strongly suggesting that chemoreceptors on the Rhinophores sense food. In any case, enjoy and note the gills near the back end.

I love dartfish (species Nemateleotris). Mostly we see N. magnifica the fire dart. Usually they are in pairs but in the Banda sea we often saw 10 or more of all sizes in a group. For years there were only three N. species but recently a fourth was discovered, N. lavandula in 2023. It is similar to Helfrich's which I have seen once but different (see inset). I want one. Here is the decora from Banda, enjoy.

Here is a nice little long arm octopus from a black water dive last night off the Sunshine. 

On a recent black water dive we came across a juvenile lionfish (I think). Larval lionfish have already developed the 18 spines that contain a neurotoxin and acetylcholine. Most of the neurotoxins (there are several, ranging from 6,000 to 200,000 MW) since they are proteins, can be denatured with heat so if you get stung, put water as hot as you can stand on it. This guy is a pain to shoot, his eyes are really really reflective. In any case, enjoy. 

Here is a nice little hydromedusa, likely a Nausithoe (punctata perhaps) from our recent black water dive off the Sunshine. In one stage of their life they live in sponges waving tentacles around (see inset). As a free swimming adult they look like this. The bean shaped brown things are gonads. In any case enjoy.

Here is a nice little hairy frogish from Lembeh. Almost all froggys have a modified fin (illicium) that wiggles a lure (esca) to attract prey. The lures can look like worms, shrimps, fish, or other tasty bits. Interestingly though the lures don't work the way that I would have thought. If you look at the fish that a froggy with a shrimp-shaped lure has had for lunch, it often is a fish that doesn't eat shrimp, same for worms. In any case, enjoy.

Here is a nice little chromodoris from North Sulawesi. There are a bunch of these Chromodorids that show a variety of colors, suggesting Mullerian mimicry. As pointed out in Layton KKS, Gosliner TM, Wilson NG. Flexible colour patterns obscure identification and mimicry in Indo-Pacific Chromodoris nudibranchs (Gastropoda: Chromodorididae). Mol Phylogenet Evol. 2018 Jul;124:27-36. doi: 10.1016/j.ympev.2018.02.008. Epub 2018 Feb 21. PMID: 29476907, “This work highlights several cases of undocumented diversity, ultimately expanding our knowledge of species boundaries in this group, while also demonstrating the limitations of colour patterns for species identification in this genus.” In any case, enjoy.