Project has launched!
We're ready for your photos! We are interested in any photos of nudibranchs eating, living on, or laying eggs on any type of coral, hard or soft. They can be from any time and from anywhere in the world, as long as you have a rough idea of the location, such as the nearest island. Let's get the data flowing!
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Got wind of your efforts when I found a documentary on nudibranchs on the California Academy of Sciences. As an avocational aficionado nature lover, photographer, etc. I just wanted to mention to you that some years ago I spied a bit of an "occupation" I guess of very lovely nudibranchs Here in my Richmond California, Marina Bay (the old Kaiser shipyards) harbor. The year(s) I'm not sure of but probably sometime in the 80's.
My curiosity question for you is that there is certainly no coral growth in our harbor. The water temperatures hover around 54 degrees and the creatures were happily munching on the ring of seaweed growth we often have at the tide-lines here in our harbor. Is it common for nudibranchs of one sort or the other to be in such surroundings?
Yeah! My coral-eating nudibranchs are a small subset of the wide nudibranch diversity. There are a lot of species in the Bay Area. Were they the pink Hopkins Rose nudibranchs? They had a bloom a few years back.
Allison,
I'll let you be the Nudibranch namer. I wouldn't know a Rose from a violet Nudibranch:-). But, now if it were flora, then as owner of my late brother Norm Jensen's 10K+ photo images of rare native plants of the Pacific states I could find some pretty scarce ones by searching through his data bases. For the last year or more I have been curating small exhibits of his more spectacular, almost "Fine Art" level images. My own specialty is larger marsh/wading and some raptors here in the bay area. A lot of these are losing the battle against extinction. I've also done exhibits of these as well. Between my birds and Norm's flora, I keep pretty busy taking photos/matting and framing them for exhibits.
You seem to have been fortunate to have visited some pretty exotic venues as well as neighborhood places (Golden Gate Park) and gotten some fabulous photos as a practicing naturalist. Bravo! Your Giant killer clams reminds me of my own youth experiences when my family lived on Kwajalein Island in the Marshalls in the '60's. Killer clams were very common (as well as black coral bushes) and could be taken while basically skin diving in the lagoon with the diving club. It was not uncommon to see Giant Killers with 3-5 foot girth in those days! I'd guess both these and the black coral are probably near extinction now with sea level and salinity issues. Beautiful place to go however. I'd like to make a bucket list visit back one of these days.
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