Slugs for the Sleepless

The last morning super low tides for the year has just passed. We visited all our favourite shores and it's been exhausting. No time to sleep much less process photos or update the blog.

For the wildfilms crew, the only thing that matters is the slugs that we manage to see on a trip. So the easiest way to update the blog would be to showcase ALL the slugs we saw this last month or so.

We saw a whole bunch of phyllids! Including a first sighting of a beautiful Phyllidia ocellata. This marvellous animal is usually only seen by divers. Phyllidia varicosa is also seldom encountered on the shores but we saw a really big one!

Left to right: Phyllidia ocellata, Phyllidia varicosa, Phylidiella nigra, Phyllidiella pustolosa

The usual suspects were encountered. The pretty blue-spotted Dendrodoris denisoni is not often seen, but we saw several. Possibly the season for them. They were big and busy. The very variable Discodoris boholensis is so frequently encountered we don't get excited anymore when we see one. So too with the pretty lined Chromodoris lineolata. There were just SOOO many Glossodoris atromarginata that we wonder what's going on.

Left to right: Dendrodoris denisoni, Discodoris boholensis,
Chromodoris lineolata, Glossodoris atromarginata

A very special find was a delightful Hypselodoris kanga with orange and blue spots and maroon edged rhinophores and gills. I haven't seen one for years! I saw a large and lovely purple nudi on an orange hydroid. I failed to show it to the rest of the crew while we were in the field, and no excuses seem to earn forgiveness. "But the tide was coming in. But I'm too old to bend. Anyway, I had tons of equipment dangling around my neck. If I bent down something would go 'oops splash'. But..."

Left to right: Hypselodoris kanga, and possibly a Flabellina sp.

More special finds included this teeny tiny Thuridilla, usually only seen by divers. And we saw not one but TWO Ceratosoma tenue. We haven't seen one for a long while.

Left to right: Thuridilla sp. and Ceratosoma tenue.

Darwin is really annoyed by the way we mouth off all the nudis by Latin names. "I must learn to speak nudibranch" he exclaims. At base camp, he starts to read to us off from the guidebooks. We are baffled.

At Pulau Sekudu, we see the usual well camouflaged large nudibranchs. We still don't know what they are.

And two new ones, although we've seen something like the red one before. We also have no idea what these are yet.

Chay Hoon, of course, finds the tiniest little slugs. The one with the filaments was seen in some numbers among the seaweeds on Changi no less! Also clueless as to identity. The little striped ones were all over the hairy green seaweeds on the Southern shores.

Left to right: unindentified slug,
and the striped one is possibly an Armina sp.

Plump, large hairy sea hares (Bursatella leachii) were everywhere on the Northern shores. This pair looked like they were getting ready to make new hairy sea hares!

I'm sure I missed out posting some of the slugs we saw. This will no doubt be indicated in the comments shortly.

Of course we saw lots of other exciting stuff: big fat cushion stars, delicately patterned brittle stars that live on feather stars and soft corals, enormous cowries, giant clams, all kinds of hard corals that are rarely seen elsewhere, and in scary hindsight, an unusual number of stonefishes.

But these don't count unless we see a slug or two...sigh.

Alas, we STILL fail miserably to find the marvellous Melibe which is recorded for Changi.

This enormous nudibranch can reach 30cm in length!!

According to the wonderful book that Wai bought for us from Sabah "Sea Slugs of Western Australia" by Fred E. Wells and Clayton W. Bryce, "They are unusual in having an extremely large oral hood fringed with tentacles which is used to capture small crustaceans. Some species can swim by flexing the body from side to side". In another note in the book "This CONSPICUOUS opisthobranch mollusc of the Indian Ocean has now invaded the Mediterranean Sea".

Why haven't we seen one yet?

Instead, we keep getting these TINY miniscule nudibranchs that can hardly be seen with the naked eye.

I guess we must just keep looking...