This varicose phyllidia is a small nudibranch, which I saw several times over the course of a week or so. Apart from being a lot smaller than the clumpy nudibranchs I saw a couple of months back, the varicose phyllidia has gills under the mantle skirt rather than in an exposed, wavy clump.
This one was two to three inches long. In the middle photo, the tiny white-spotted toby and small brown surgeonfish give a sense of scale.
A couple of days ago, I saw an octopus while snorkeling. It was on a vertical face of rock and when I showed up it slipped around the corner out of sight. I followed and could see it had gone into a recess there. I saw a tentacle moving and then, moments later, a round white thing appeared, a tentacle clasped around it.
I was mystified. I thought it might be the remains of an urchin or something. The white globe disappeared back into the depths. Moments later it appeared out of the side of the recess and it quickly became clear that the round white balloon was the head of another, completely white octopus. This white coloration is adopted when an octopus is feeling aggressive or threatened.
After a brief flurry of tentacles the white octopus disengaged, shot away a short distance, and changed color again as it landed on a rock. The octopus I’d first seen appeared again at the entrance of the recess. There was a little more to and fro before the evicted octopus gave up and moved away and the first octopus slipped back into the depths of the recess. My take on this was that the octopus I saw first wasn’t happy to find the other octopus in its lair and turfed it out.
The top photo shows the evicted octopus gathering itself after being run off. The second photo shows it on the move, still with the white coloration. The third photo shows the victor in the dispute, looking a little smug if I may say so.
Yesterday, when I was out snorkeling, I was spotted this entity hanging in the water. When I first saw it, I thought it might be a pyrosoma. I was lucky enough to see one of those last year, which I posted about here. Pyrosoma are colonies of many individual tunicates and this new sighting looked somewhat similar. But where that pyrosoma looked like a gelatinous tube with little purple dots in it, this tube was longer, thinner, and had much larger, and clearly visible, brown spots in it.
After some research, I’m pretty sure this is a chained salp. Like pyrosoma, chained salps are colonies of individuals. The individuals have a heart, gills and a spinal cord, which makes them quite advanced in evolutionary terms. They move around by pumping water through their bodies. When they form chains, the individuals in the chains communicate with electrical signals so the the chain moves in harmony.
Typically, salps are creatures of the open ocean, and not often seen in Hawaii, so I feel quite fortunate to have seen this one.
If you like graphic violence, you’re at the right place today. This is a triton’s trumpet sea snail devouring a cushion star, which has been turned on its back. These snails are the largest in the island and feed on echinoderms, which include stars, cucumbers, and urchins.
Posted in response to Becky’s October Squares challenge theme of ‘Kind.’ See more responses here.
I was almost done with my swim yesterday when I noticed this small day octopus sneaking into this crack. It was shallow there so I got a decent photo of the octopus watching me. Then I swam on a few feet. The octopus, as they do, emerged from its hideaway, so I quickly turned and got the second photo. I can be kind of sneaky, too.
Posted in response to Becky’s October Squares challenge theme of ‘Kind.’ See more responses here.
This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Morning Rituals.’ See more responses here.
Most mornings, I try to get in the water, as conditions and schedules allow. Morning is the best time for snorkeling as the water is usually calmer before the wind picks up as the day wears on. Visibility can vary from day to day and it can help to check surf reports to see if there are any swells moving in. But calm water doesn’t guarantee good visibility just as swells don’t always mean bad visibility. There’s only one way to be sure and that’s to jump in.
My favorite thing about snorkeling is that every day is different and I never know what I’ll see. Going to the same spot means I become familiar with some of the regulars, but there are always transient creatures passing through including rays and dolphins. And while those big creatures are great to encounter, it’s equally interesting to watch the activities of smaller fish and marine invertebrates.
It’s a rare day indeed that I don’t emerge prattling on about something I saw while I was in the water. And on those rare days, well, I’ve still had a good swim to set me up for the day ahead.
My local snorkeling spot has been roiled with excitement lately over the appearance of a couple of clumpy nudibranchs. Well, it’s exciting for us.
Nudibranchs (pronounced noo-di-branks or noo-da-branks) are members of the sea slug family. Granted this doesn’t sound too exciting, but nudibranchs are strange and exotic and often wildly colorful. The reason I haven’t posted photos of a nudibranch before is that I’ve never seen one before, let alone got a photo of one. That’s the downside of nudibranchs; they tend to be on the small side. One to three inches is typical for most of them. But clumpy nudibranchs are big, up to 10 inches long. In nudibranch world they’re like King Kong, visible from space.
When they were first spotted, I didn’t see them, but I was on high alert. And then, one day, I saw my first nudibranch. I popped up and called to my wife, only to see her waving at me to come see the nudibranch where she was. So this established that nudibranchs are like buses; you wait and wait and wait, then two come along at the same time. Since then, I’ve seen one or both of them most days I get in the water. Each time I’ve seen either of them they’ve been motoring along at speed, at least for a slug.
Clumpy nudibranchs have some color variations which can be seen in these photos. One has more yellow coloring, the other (second photo) being browner. The order’s name, Nudibranchia, means naked gills. These are the feathery clumps to the rear of the nudibranch. The two protuberances at the front are sensory organs. Clumpy nudibranchs feed mainly on sponges (not the cake variety).
Last week I posted some octopus photos here. A few days after taking those photos, I had another octopus encounter which I enjoyed a good deal.
I swam over a rocky ledge and saw an octopus in the middle of a large, flat rock. The rock was pale, but speckled and the octopus was quite white with brown markings. When an octopus gets angry it will flush white, but that wasn’t what was happening with this one. Its paleness was an attempt to blend in.
I stopped and the octopus froze. I took a couple of photos. There was another rock a short way away with a dark area where it overlapped the rock the octopus was on. Very slowly, the octopus oozed out a tentacle toward that dark area (top photo). Once the tip reached the shadow it appeared to drop anchor. Then the body of the octopus followed, hauled along on that anchored tentacle. A few moments later, the bulk of the octopus reached the shadows and slipped from view.
It was a slow, deliberate process and I couldn’t help laughing to myself. It appeared as though the octopus hoped that by sliding off in this incremental way I wouldn’t notice its departure. Such a pretty octopus though.
Graham's Island 