The variety and the colors of the nudibranch here never cease to amaze me. For those of you who don't know what a nudibranch is, other then a colorful looking thing I keep talking about, I will explain. Briefly. Very briefly. This paragraph is actually already longer then the explanation will be. A nudibranch is a slug. The name nudibranch means 'naked lung.' Those fluffy protrusions on the back of must nudibranch are it's gills, which are external. Neat eh?
I could fill these posts each day with nothing but pictures of different nudibranch, never showing the same species twice. But then I'd be leaving out all the other odd and amazing stuff we see each dive. Today was a full day, four more dives. First dive was a deep dive at Sahara, then Masaplod North, and then back to Dauin North. We were supposed to do our fourth dive on the house reef, but decided to go back to San Miguel, since this time we all had our cameras and we knew where the flamboyant cuttlefish was last spotted, and they don't wander far.
For the last dive at San Miguel we had Gabi as our dive master instead of Wing (he also did the night dive with us last night). Another great example of a dive master. He knew we were looking for the flamboyant cuttlefish, so his dive briefing focused on where to find it. Locate the anemone with the saddle back anemone fish, ascend up the slope to thirty feet of depth, look around there. We followed that plan, and sure enough, there it was.
Our other dives also brought us more great critters, like leaf scorpion fish, painted frogfish, clown frogfish, mimic octopus, and a really friendly bat fish that kept following me around like a puppy. Quick note, the picture of the minuscule frogfish the other day was a CLOWN frogfish, not painted. We saw both and I got them mixed up. That's it for now. Stay tuned.
Todays pictures are another nudibranch, an ornate ghost pipefish, a mimic octopus, and an orangutang crab.
More to follow.
-Matt
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