Category: Sea Monsters
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Back to the Fuchsia
Everything came together. I navigated through crappy visibility. I clambered around in surge that felt like the spin cycle. I stared at rocks until my vision focused on tiny fuchsia Spanish Shawls, my favorite nudibranch. I shed the responsibility of someone else’s good time, and all I had was my own.
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Photo of the Week: The Hitchhiker
If I’d had the ocular fortitude to spot the microscopic amphipod hitchhiking a ride on this nudibranch’s back, I would have spent all damn day shooting those two little guys. However, I never even saw it until I was home, my gear was rinsed and drying, and I was on the computer, heavily cropping this…
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Updated Flickr Gallery: Anilao Muck Diving
I’ve added new photos to my Anilao, Philippines muck diving gallery on Flickr, including underwater photos of pipefish, ribbon eels, and mantis shrimp. Enjoy :)
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Back in Sun Diego: Solar-powered sea critters
Yesterday, while enjoying the heat at the pool, I briefly considered the possibility that maybe I was actually solar-powered. I don’t need food anymore, I thought, All I need is warmth. This of course was incorrect, and I shuffled my flip-flops home almost immediately thereafter and ate some soup. But it reminded me of critters…
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This Shrimp is the Tiniest Sea Creature You’ve Never Seen
It’s easy for divers to get stoked on seeing the big-ticket critters. Manta rays? Majestic. Sharks? Spellbinding. So far, we’re all on the same page here. There’s this cognitive leap, though, that occurs for divers when they learn to find and appreciate the nudibranch. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, but this…
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The Reproductive Habits of the Ghost Pipefish (A Limerick)
When asked of his ties to the seahorse, the ghost pipefish replied in due course: “Though I lack a pouch, “our girls are no slouch, “and they tend to their eggs without remorse.”
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Why the Mantis Shrimp Rocks
Although named for its resemblance to both praying mantis and shrimp, the mantis shrimp is neither; it’s a stomatopod, in fact only a distant relative of crabs, shrimps, and lobsters. Stomatopods can be loosely divided into two groups based on how they kill prey with their raptorial appendages (I just want to say that over…
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Nudibranch Valentine
Because nothing’s more romantic than a heart made of hermaphroditic sea slugs, I present to you: a nudibranch valentine. Slugs for the sweet.
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A Limerick about the Ornate Ghost Pipefish
There once was a pipefish so ornate, the crinoid it lived in seemed cut-rate. “This feather star’s plain,” said the fish, “I’d not deign “to inhabit so homely an estate.”
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Wednesday Roundup: “Vegetarian” Vampire Squid, Solar Powered Nudibranchs, and a SEA TURTLE in San Diego!
Happy New Year! In case you need a break from the endless reruns of the Rose Parade, you’re killing time until the football game starts, or you’re just plain too hung over to do anything but mindlessly click links on the Web, I’m here for you.