It's a Wrap!

I woke up early and I am so ready to just sit still on a plane and sleep (or read).  I feel like I am full of nitrogen, my gills are wet and I can’t wait to get home to my own place.

The flights home were pretty easy.  The hardest part was getting to Manila in the private van.

I shared a ride with Rainer to the airport so he was my first interviewee for the Slugger Trading Cards.

Here are my end of Anilao trip stats (the ones last night were for the overall group).

Species found: 169

Trending Graph

I still need to do the analysis to see how many are new to me.

In Anilao I did 40 dives bringing me up to a total number of lifetime dives of 2,460.  Until next time...

The Big Reveal

Well, only two dives today and we are done.  I am feeling pretty satiated.  It is a LOT to try to keep it all together.  A vacation like this is a lot of work.

I came down to the lecture room and got a good scolding from Jim.  Not only were our species due by midnight last night, we’ve been doing it all wrong.  We were supposed to put ALL the species seen on each dive.  Jim is going to send me a digital spreadsheet so that I can do it completely.  Professor Terry officially gave me an extension.  

Jim was probably in a bad mood because the resort doesn’t have an egg cup for his boiled egg.  They finally got one and he used it for one day.  The staff then promptly threw it away.  I told him that he should travel with his own.  I mean it’s a pretty small item.  

We need to submit our final data for Jim and up to 10 images for slideshow by 2:30pm.  Yikes.  

At the morning session, I learned that I identified the Siphopteron flavolineatum incorrectly.  This is a Siphopteron nakakatuwa which I was told means cute in Tagalog.  But after looking it up, it means “funny • humorous • ridiculous • causing laughter • laughable • jocose • witty • comical”.  Flagellum is the name for the thing in the back.

We have also been talking abuot identifying Ceratosomas… which I have been calling the ones with the Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL) because they have a raised part where their gills are.

Since we didn’t have Nudi Council yesterday, we had TWO days worth of photos to look thru.  OMG… this session went on for so long.

Then we had our group picture taken.  It’s always a challenge to get everyone together and we almost had one taken without Mike Miller.  He is the reason we are all here diving.  

The two last dives were great.  I continued to find some new species.

I came back for lunch and the internet was out.  I did my best to meet our deadline, using mostly photos that I already had on my computer.  This Lightroom connected to the internet thing just sucks when the WiFi is down.

OMG.  This was all too much pressure, and I had to come to my air conditioned room to be alone for a while.  Sometimes I question: Is this really what I do on vacation?

I watched some downloaded shows and then sat with Pirjo to help her set up Custom modes on her camera like mine.  I figured it wasn’t going to be hard, but then I realized all of her settings were in French!  We did it though.

Hannah, Geogina and Anouk came to the cocktail hour with the cutest nudi costumes!  I was a little jealous that I wasn’t on their boat all week.  Maybe we can do a trip together in the future.

I wasn't as fancy, but I did wear my nudi scarf, headband and two nudi necklaces!

Dinner was so delicious and they created some beautiful nudibranch cupcakes.

The slideshow afterward that Mike put together with our pictures was great.

The big reveal was that we didn’t beat our numbers of unique species from other years, but we DID have a huge number of  brand new to the region and new to science.  SEVENTEEN!!!  I am so glad to have made it to this one and I am already excited for 2027.

We found 17 species that are completely new to science.  Wow!

I said goodbye to everyone tonight, because tomorrow I leave at 6am for Manila.

Here are the final findings…

164 - Ceratodoris kendi

165 - Tenellia sibogae

166 - Dermatobranchus funiculus

167 - Hypselodoris nigrostriata

168 - Cratena simba

169 - Dermatobranchus sp. 6

Schmutz

I woke up early to get my slug list together.  I’m not sure if I have any new ones on top of Pirjo.

We left at 7am for Ligpo.  The dive was ok.  I’m not sure why we went that far.  Then the second dive was AWFUL.  I called it Schmutz.  Seriously, so bad.  We saw NOTHING.

Then they served us lunch in little bento boxes on the boat.  I couldn’t even finish mine and gave the rest to the boat crew.

I took my iPhone on the boat, so here are some pictures of what it is like:

We also filmed a little video to submit to Kelly Clarkson because Terry’s Sharpies won’t write anymore.

I found out that Terry has two kids and one grandson who is three.  He named Chromodoris joshi after his son and Chromodoris heatherae after his daughter.  His wife has a whole genus named after her called Bonisa described in 1981.

Then I asked about the process for extracting nudibranch radula and looking at it under a microscope.  I wanted to hear about the process and the labs.  He invited me out to San Franciso to see it sometime at the California Academy of Sciences.  That would be SO COOL.  I definitely want to.  He said that he just needs a week’s notice.

Crap.  I lost a whole bunch of edits I did on my Dive Log Excel file.  I think it was because the WiFi was down and I was working locally… but then it couldn’t sync up.  Argh.  I was able to recover most of the data pretty quickly.

I arranged for a night dive tonight with Glenn but then Mike said no, all the guys were going home.  WTF?  Nobody communicated the fact that on a special three tank trip there is no night dive.  C’mon.  Glenn and his boat crew DID stay and we DID have a night dive.  Yay!  One other boat went out for a night dive as well, so I didn’t feel too bad about it.

I figured out that one of my batteries for the focus light/strobes is dead.  It is just no longer working.  I have to buy at least one more new one.  I wonder if Backscatter would do anything to help me with it since I haven’t even had it one year and may be under warranty.

Slug List

153 - Reticulidia halgerda

154 - Phyllidiopsis shireenae

155 - Gymnodoris sp. 23

156 - Hypselodoris sp.

157 - Sagaminopteron nigropunctatum

158 - Trapania sp. 2

159 - Janolus sp. 7

160 - Samla riwo

161 - Goniobranchus aureopurpureus

162 - Goniobranchus preciosus

163 - Marionia sp. 5

I must be getting tired.  A lot of these pictures aren't great.

T-Shirt Fashion

Well, I went to sleep early last night, so I am up early this morning.  There was another power blip and the internet went out again.

I talked to Harvey some more about our camera.  He gave me some good hints and tricks and I implemented them.  Also I learned that in order to get out of the magnify mode, just hold in the button for a couple of seconds.

Tomorrow we leave early on the boat (like 7am) and have to bring our ID and Certification cards.  It is a long trip and we are doing three dives at Bavan Sanctuary and Dive & Trek.

I realized today that Mike should have a nudibranch thumb drive instead of a frogfish one.  I think I have a good assignment for 2027.

In the morning review, everyone loved my cuddle puddle (Terry called them maggots!)… Mike suggested that maybe I flip it?  Meh, I don’t think so.

I learned that Caloria have tentacular foot corners.

I completely forgot to change my batteries this morning so on the first dive, my focus light was not working.  Ugh.  So I switched it for my kraken underwater and that was OK.

At the surface interval, I opened the focus light up.  I hate doing that on the boat but if I just put the batteries in backward, that is an easy fix.  That was not the case.  Then Mike, “The Godfather” stepped in.  He makes me so nervous.  He looked at it and then just like me concluded the batteries weren’t charged.  But, Mario had batteries on the boat and lent them to me.  Mike joked that I needed TWO MEN to save my dive.  I hate that… I never want to rely on men, but I was grateful to have working focus light.

We decided that Francis’ nickname should be “Dr. Snoot” because all he does is snoot his subjects.  I also like to call Pirjo “Photobomb” because she photobombed some selfies I did with slugs years ago.

I took pictures of all the nudibranch t-shirts at lunch.

I asked Terry how many species he has described.  He said like 430ish.  Wow.  I asked him if he ever got tired of it.  He said, no.  That he is still really excited about it.  The only challenge is when there is uninformed discussion on one of his scientific papers.

After lunch it was just Mike and I on a dive with Glen.  He took down three of Terry’s collected specimens and I was able to shoot two of the three.  I even had help snooting a diopter photo on one Siphopteron nakakatuwa.

I finally feel like I have graduated to a real photographer.

Blackwater was canceled because we didn’t have a boat.  But we had a great night dive and spent a lot of time in the shallows.  I feel like Glenn has really upped his spotting game in the last couple of days.

We finally have WiFi again.  It was out for almost two days.

Just keep slugging…

138 - Goniobranchus albopunctatus

139 - Miamira miamirana

140 - Thordisa sp. 11

141 - Siphopteron nakakatuwa

I learned that the Flagellum is the thing in the back.

142 - Doto ussi

143 - Samla bilas

144 - Facelina sp. 4

145 - Phyllodesmium pecten

146 - Trapania gibbera

147 - Coryphellina flamma

148 - Coryphellina rubrolineata

149 - Hoplodoris rosans

This used to be Otinodoris sp. 1.

150 - Marionia arborescens

151 - Phyllodesmium magnum

152 - Discodoris boholensis